Film Cincinnati's Kristen Schlotman, the nonprofit's executive director, will travel to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah this week to support the locally-made feature.
The Joe Berlinger-directed flick tells the story of one of the United States' most notorious serial killers, Ted Bundy, who confessed to 30 murders in the 1970s. It's told through the perspective of Bundy's longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who stayed with him throughout the murder trial in 1979. Starring Zac Efron as Bundy and Lily Collins as Kloepfer, the film's Jan. 26 screening at Sundance will mark its world premiere.
Filming sites for Extremely Wicked included Northern Kentucky University's campus (shout-out to its brutalist architecture), Covington's Mainstrasse Village — which was transformed into a '70s-era Colorado town, complete with classic cruisers — Midwest Gas on Alexandria Pike and other spots in Newport and Fort Thomas. Efron even jumped out a Campbell County Courthouse window.
“We are proud of the work that director Joe Berlinger and his crew did on the film and we are going to Sundance to support their premiere,” says Schlotman in a press release. “Sundance is the largest independent film festival in this country and is a major showcase for films like Extremely Wicked."
Other local films at the fest include short Old Haunt, which was directed and written by its star, Andre Hyland, an Indian Hill High School and University of Cincinnati graduate; he also is an actor in another Sundance film, The Death of Dick Long. Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar's documentary American Factory will also make its debut at Sundance — read more about the film here.
Film Cincinnati last attended Sundance in 2016, when three locally-made features were shown: GOAT, The Fits and Miles Ahead.
The Queen City was recently in a flurry when word surfaced that Mark Ruffalo was in town to shoot scenes for the film Dry Run, which also stars Anne Hathaway and Tim Robbins. Directed by Todd Haynes — who also filmed 2015's Carol in Cincy — the movie will center around Robert Bilott, a Cincinnati-based lawyer who took on the chemical company DuPont in an environmental lawsuit that stretched for eight years.
