QC Entertainment will produce and finance Ellen Burstyn‘s long-awaited feature directorial Bathing Flo, which the Oscar and Emmy-winning actress will star in and serve as EP.
Deadline’s Mike Fleming broke the news about Bathing Flo in August 2014. The project is inspired by events in the life of Thruline manager-producer Danny Sherman. Set in New York, Bathing Flo centers around a man named Danny in need of a place to live, who’s given the chance by Michael to house-sit in exchange for free rent. Danny discovers the house is occupied by Michael’s elderly mother Flo, who is part of the deal.
Bathing Flo was written by actress/first-time writer Lauren Lake, based on an initial screenplay by Danny Brocklehurst and Danny Sherman. Lake will also co-star in the film. Casting is underway with an eye on a spring production start in New York. The film is being sold during the Berlinale Market, and the project is co-repped for domestic film sales by ICM and QC Entertainment, which is the recently formed partnership between Bathing Flo‘s producers Sean McKittrick and Ray Mansfield, and pic’s EPs Edward H. Hamm Jr. and Shaun Redick. Thruline Entertainment’s Sherman, as well as Lake will produce with Erica Steinberg serving in a producer capacity.
During the 1970s, Burstyn was part of AFI’s first directing workshop for women. She told Deadline’s Mike Fleming, “I made a nice little film and thought I should direct, but I was so busy acting, and every time I’d bring it up, it was something that was always sort of discouraged for women.” Since getting the script for Bathing Flo, Burstyn began picturing scenes.
The award-winning actress also told Deadline, “Back in the ’70s, the idea of a woman directing was pretty unheard of. When I brought Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to John Calley at Warner Bros, he asked me then if I wanted to direct it. I said I didn’t feel I was ready to act and direct at the same time. AFI made me more confident, but somehow it never came together and I never got asked again the way that John asked me. And I never found something I really felt I wanted to direct, until now.”
In 1975, Burstyn became the third woman in history to win both the Tony Award and the Oscar in the same year, for her work in Bernard Slade’s Same Time, Next Year on Broadway and in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. She became a triple crown winner when she won her first Emmy for a guest appearance in Law & Order: SVU in 2009. Most recently in 2016, she received an Emmy nod for her turn as Elizabeth Hale in Netflix’s House of Cards.
Burstyn is repped by ICM Partners, and Courtney Kivowitz of MGMT Management. Lake is repped by attorney Sean Marks. Brocklehurst is repped by UTA, United Agents, and Thruline Entertainment. Mansfield negotiated the deals on behalf of QC Entertainment.
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