Lonely Hearts Hits the Festival Circuit
Lonely Hearts was originally conceived when Cahlo was listening to a true crime podcast. The episode was about a serial killer’s first attempt at online catfishing and how it backfired. Inspired by the absurdity of this true story, Cahlo saw the potential for a scary-yet-hilarious film premise. From there, he presented a simple idea to star and Executive Producer Bethany Watson: “What if we took the horror/slasher genre and comedically turned it on its head?” From that jumping off point, the two finalized the script, drew storyboards and character designs based on Dennis’ love of Italian Giallo and Hitchcock films, and carefully crafted a world that took an incredibly talented team to help bring to life. Brimming with hidden secrets, clues, and twists, Cahlo and his team sought to fill every frame with cinematic homages, story clues, and visual treats that would have audiences wanting to re-watch the film just to catch them all.
Lonely Hearts has 18 Official Selections to date – including a coveted spot at the Graveyard Shift of the Academy Award Qualifying Nashville Film Festival. It has also been selected as part of the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Short Film Showcase, held at the Robin Williams Center in New York City. After all of its challenges to pull off, Lonely Hearts came together because of the tireless efforts of its insanely talented cast and crew, and ended up being a total success story.
After wrapping production, Cahlo and Watson realized that there was so much more of this story to tell. Starting almost immediately after picture lock, the two began building a pitch deck for a televised 3 season “trilogy” series that will explore the worlds and characters of Lonely Hearts in much greater detail, vision, and scope. They plan to start pitching it to networks in 2020.
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