It's Dirty Harry, only hairier, and it's a Saskatchewan-made film coming to the big screen. The team behind WolfCop was at the Yorkton Film Festival to discuss the experience of bringing the project to the big screen.
Director Lowell Dean admits that the idea was deceptively simple, but one that took hold and one that the filmmakers believed in. They were determined to get it made even if they had to finance it themselves.
The horror-comedy is a bit of a throwback to the Roger Corman productions of the '70s and '80s, and Dean says it was a deliberate choice on his end to make a film which had the charm and appeal of low-budget B-movies.
"I'm just sick of digital effects, I'm sick of movies where there are a thousand armies fighting a thousand armies. I just want to see people, and I want to see practical effects. Even with their mistakes, the mistakes are charming. For me it's just a throwback... I just want movies that are a good, ridiculous time," Dean says.
Even before it's premiere a sequel has been greenlit, and Dean says that he's excited to start work on the next part of the franchise. He says that he's not going to take his good fortune for granted, and is hard at work developing the next film.
"This is the dream, to keep making movies, especially movies that are my babies."
J. Joly and Brian Wideen are the CEOs and co-founders of CineCoup, which financed the project. WolfCop is the first feature from the company, which took a new model for selecting projects. They decided to take a competition-focused approach, getting films into a competition for $1 million in funding and a theatrical release in Cineplex. While a new approach from the audience end, Joly says that competition has always been a major part of the studio system, it has just been behind closed doors until now.
"I believe competition has always been with us, we just have gone a more transparent way than a more hidden way."
Wideen says that they also wanted to go with crowdsourcing because they believed it was the best way to build an audience and get the people who would eventually go see the films on board. He says that from the beginning the audience picked winning projects.
Dean says that the experience of CineCoup was relentless, and like a full-time job to get the content out there.
While WolfCop itself is a high concept cult film, Wideen says that finalists ran the gamut from comedy, action, and coming of age dramas. The goal is to make a movie people want to see.
"The audience is king, and that's the way it should be, that's where all the money is."
Part of the goal was to go to the filmmakers and make the movies where they live. All three say it was a challenge to shoot in the province, especially as the film came after the end of the film tax credit but before Creative Saskatchewan. Wideen says while it could have been cheaper to film elsewhere, by keeping it at home they are getting a province on board that wants to see local content.
"There's more than how many dollars you are getting from tax credits and comparing the two."
Dean agrees, and says that having a film that was entirely Saskat-chewan made, apart from some post-production work, is something he's proud to produce.
"I can't wait to sit in a theatre in Saskatchewan, and see Saskatchewan on the big screen. It's not what you expect, it's raunchy, it's weird, it's crazy, and I think it's got a great story. It's so rare, you never see Saskatchewan on the big screen, and this will show the world how crazy we are," Dean says.
WolfCop opens June 6 in western Canada in Cineplex theatres.
