Loser

Loser is set to be the first female-led time travel movie, shot on location in NYC/NJ on 16mm film.

Project type: Fiction Feature
Project status: Post Production
Writer/Director/Producer: Colleen McGuinness
Producer: Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett)
Producer: Dan Lawler
Producer: Michael Sherman
Cast: Angourie Rice, Finn Bennett, Lukas Gage, Julia Fox

Website: deadline.com
 
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Logline

A brilliant physicist, Alice, tries to heal her trauma through time travel but gets entangled in a twisted game of murder and violence in NYC, turning her quest into a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase.

Synopsis

A brilliant physicist, Alice, tries to heal her trauma through time travel but gets entangled in a twisted game of murder and violence in NYC, turning her quest into a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase.
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Colleen McGuinness — Writer/Director/Producer
Colleen McGuinness is an Emmy, WGA, and PGA nominated writer and director. Her original short film Loser starring Angourie Rice was shot on 16mm film and has been an Official Selection in over 25 film festivals, winning numerous prizes including honors for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Short, Best Screenplay and others.

Colleen’s writing credits include the Emmy-winning 30 Rock on NBC, Ramy on Hulu, Forever on Amazon, Friends From College on Netflix, Life and Beth for Hulu, and Black Widow for Hulu. McGuinness has sold projects to HBO, FX, Paramount+, New Line Cinema, Max, and Apple+, and has developed projects with A24, Tina Fey, Reese Witherspoon, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Patty Jenkins, Natasha Lyonne, and Carolyn Strauss.

Colleen began her career interning for legendary director Claudia Weill (Girlfriends) at 19, and has directed plays at the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Ex and the Hasty Pudding Theater in Cambridge, MA. Named a Fellow in the Film Independent Directing Lab, Colleen has studied filmmaking, stop-motion animation, acting, and photography at UCLA, The Barrow Group, and Maine Media. Colleen, who is half-Korean and half-Irish, graduated cum laude in English from Harvard University and lives in New York City with her husband, two children, and miniature schnauzer, Elaine.

Radio Silence — Producer
Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett) is known for their movies that blend horror with comedy, adventure, action and sci-fi. Most recently, they released Abigail for Universal Pictures with Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett directing. Previously, they revived the Scream franchise for Spyglass and Paramount with Scream (2022) and Scream VI (2023). Previous feature film work includes the thriller Ready or Not for Fox Searchlight Pictures, Southbound, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Devil’s Due for 20th Century Fox and the Sundance Midnight cult hit V/H/S, which has generated five sequels and counting.

Dan Lawler — Producer
Dan Lawler, originally from Rochester, NY (the same town as Kodak), is a writer, producer and line producer who has worked in various aspects of the film industry over the last 20+ years. From recent film projects like Strange Darling and The Exorcism to helicopter units for docuseries like Surviving Black Hawk Down and Night Stalker: Search for a Serial Killer to his hands-on roots in the art department on features, TV and commercials, Dan is always looking for new and exciting challenges. Lawler was the in-house production supervisor at Miramax where he oversaw physical production on features large (The Beekeeper, Here) and small (Strange Darling, Sick) under Bill Block’s regime at the studio. Being intimately involved in the studio’s operations shed further light on the downstream components of filmmaking and opened up a new avenue of prep-through-post producing that Dan finds himself on today. Working almost exclusively in film since 2018, some highlights include the 2019 Sundance winner Clemency, the first film greenlit by SAG during the Covid-19 pandemic, Untitled Horror Movie and Bill Burr’s feature film directorial debut, Old Dads, along with numerous projects with Scott Free Productions, Netflix and others. A one-time math major with varied experience throughout the industry, Dan works comfortably everywhere between on- the-ground production and the 30,000-foot producer / EP view.

Michael Sherman — Producer
Michael Sherman is a movie producer; he co-founded Bow and Arrow Entertainment, a production company that focuses on artist driven narrative and documentary pictures. Bow and Arrow has had 14 films premiere at the Sundance film festival as well as many other festivals throughout the world. His recent film Horsegirls premiered at Tribeca in June and A Photographic Memory is in theaters this summer. Sherman is also a devoted patron of the arts. He serves as a trustee at his hometown Baltimore Musuem of Art.

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Contact

For inquiries, please contact fiscalsponsorship@filmindependent.org.