GUADALAJARA – As he prepares to star in season two of Amazon Prime series “Hand of God,” Ron Perlman has moved forward on his first slate of productions at his studio-film fund Wing and a Prayer Pictures, teaming with Michael Shannon’s Plot 4 to make “Pottersville,” which is the first movie fully financed by Wing and a Prayer.
Meanwhile, having mounted a personal campaign to get “Hellboy 3” made, Perlman admitted that it “probably will never happen, though you never say never never.”
Wing and a Prayer productions received financial backing from the State of New York. The directorial debut of Seth Hendrickson, comedy “Pottersville” stars Shannon, in a rare romantic lead; Christina Hendricks; Judy Greer; Ian McShane; and Thomas Lennon. Perlman has a secondary role.
“A bit of an homage to Frank Capra,” “Pottersville” “is based on a town which is a little bit down on its luck but maintains a buoyancy and personality through a population of idiosyncratic citizens, though outsourcing has killed the economy,” Perlman told Variety on Sunday at Mexico’s Guadalajara Festival, where he received a tribute this weekend.
Wing and a Prayer’s backing from the State of New York is “historic,” he said.
“It’s the story of lot of modern American towns in a kind of Capra-esque screwball comedy,” he added.
Wing and a Prayer is also producing “Asher,” with Perlman playing an aging New York-based, Mossad-trained hitman. Going into production in September, Peter Medak (“The Ruling Class,” “The Changeling”) is attached to direct. Also on the slate is “Wooden Lake,” directed by Perlman himself, “a very small intimate story with a comedic edge about a family dealing with personal tragedy,” he said.
Wing and a Prayer Pictures also co-produced Marc Forster’s “All I See Is You,” with Blake Lively, and “The Runaround,” with J.K. Simmons and Emile Hirsch.
Shooting films in central New York, Wing and a Prayer “will be my final act. It’s my attempt to create an environment where artists get their visions to the screen in an unfettered way as foreign to profits, bottom line and stockholders as can possibly be,” Perlman concluded.
