Planet Wearth, A SciFi Feature
Planet Wearth is the story of a group of castaways that flee their dying planet in the not too distant future, heading towards an earth-like planet after a conflagration on their own. They are the ‘Noah’s Ark’ of humanity, every stripe of creed, color, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. They arrive at what they know as Gliese 581, but the inhabitants there call it ‘Wearth’. It is a seeming utopia: no war, no crime, a world government, everyone has a job and lives in seeming harmony. Once the castaways arrive, though, they must pass a series of written, genetic, and biological tests to determine their acceptance into Wearthian society. The ones that fail get sent to a walled-off city in the middle of a desert where their job is to work in the factories making robots for everybody else. The ones that pass are given jobs, places to live, and are embedded, unbeknownst to them, with a chip that makes them forget about their fellow castaways that didn’t pass.
Production of the trailer was a challenge in and of itself in January, 2014. The dates for the two day shoot were picked months before. Even though I’m a meteorologist by trade, there is no reliable forecast that far in advance. So it turns out the interiors on the first evening were shot while the weather was fairly benign and seasonable. The second evening’s shoot, however, coincided with a Winter Storm: 5” of snow, 15 cast and crew in 15 degrees, along with North winds 15-30 mph. It was the Cosmos’ way of saying “Ah, so you really wanna make movies, huh?!” But what amazing images and performances that were captured!
Cast includes: Joe Henry as “Captain John Dougherty”, Lily Spencer as “Cathy Saltzburg”, Tony Gugliotta as “News Anchor”, Bill Jacques, Moises Bouringal, Marlene ‘Win’ Matias, Jayson Matias, Karl & Amy D’Souza, Phanida Phivilay, Evan Bessette as Castaways, Felix Cepeda and Hector Paulino as Wearthian Thugs, Rajah Samaroo, Director of Photography, Patrycja Pawlak, Associate Director, R.J. Heim as Host.
If you’re interested in reading the entire script, send me an email here. Let’s make this movie!
