Columbus Short, Ondine’s Alicja Bachleda, Wilmer Valderrama and Jesse Spencer have all signed on to star in noir thriller** The Girl is in Trouble**.
The film finds a New York bartender (Short) who gets mixed up in a mystery linking a scared young woman (Bachleda), a drug dealer who has gone missing and the son of the city’s most powerful financial trader.
But the more interesting story might be the background for the film, which represents just the latest step in what sounds like the flourishing career for one New York University film student. Not only has Julius Onah scored the film as his feature debut (and his thesis project), but he’s been listed as a talent to watch by Filmmaker Magazine and a short he shot on a phone, Goodbye Chicken, Farewell Goat screened at the LA Film Festival.
Oh, and did we mention he has a mentor in Spike Lee, and that the director will executive produce the movie? In the immortal words of Michael Palin's Ben: "You lucky bastard. You lucky, lucky bastard." Okay, so it sounds like he's also got some ability or, as the young people are calling it, mad skillz.
Onah wrote the script with Mayuran Tiruchelvam, and plans to start shooting later this autumn in NYC.