True Noir:The Assassination of Anton Cermak, an exciting new audio drama from the new company Imagination Connoisseurs Unlimited, made a big splash at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend and Cherry the Geek TV spoke with producers Mike Bawden and Robert Meyer Burnett (who also directed) about the project.
The drama is based on the Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition) crime novel True Detective featuring the fictional sleuth Nathan Heller. “The hook is that Nathan Heller is fictional, but the stories he gets involved with are real,” said Burnett. In the story, Heller interacts with real life historical figures like Al Capone, Elliot Ness, Frank Nitti, Hollywood actor George Raft, and boxing legend Barney Ross. “It’s basically like a sequel to The Untouchables or Collins’ own Road to Perdition. In this story Al Capone is already in jail, Elliot Ness is wrapping up his time in Chicago as Prohibition is about to end, and Nathan Heller gets hired by Al Capone to try to prevent the assassination of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who he thinks his second-in-command Frank Nitti is going to assassinate because Cermak tried to kill Nitti.”
Burnett spoke about his love of audio dramas and why he chose this format to tell the story. “When I was a kid, other than Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, I loved the CBS Radio Mystery Theater–it was on at 10:07 every night. I listened to it in bed–they had like 3000 episodes. E.G. Marshall hosted it. I loved the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio drama. I loved the NPR Star Wars. More recently, I loved The Sandman audio drama and also Batman:Unburied,” he said. “Trying to raise money for movies is really hard, but you need a lot less money to make an epic audio drama. My approach to this is that’s it’s not an audio drama in my mind. It’s a movie, just without the “cinema”. It’s written like a film. The script could be a feature film or a streaming series. My casting director cast Boogie Nights. I sent her the script. The first person I cast was Anthony LaPaglia. He was Al Capone in Road to Perdition but he got cut out of the film. You can watch his scene on YouTube. I was like ‘Let’s get him!’ He was amazing. After that casting happened, other actors became interested. We went after targeted people and got every one we wanted. This cast is unbelievable.”
The drama features an all-star cast including Anthony LaPaglia as Capone, Jeffrey Combs as Cermak, Adam Arkin, Curtis Armstrong, Barry Bostwick, P.J. Byrne, Corey Landis, Kris Carr, Jeffrey Combs, Devin Conrad, Rob Roy FItzgerald, Saverio Guerra, C. Thomas Howell, Louis Lombardi, Don McManus, Bill Mumy, Vincent Pastore, Katee Sackhoff, Bill Sadler, Bill Smitrovich, Jesse Spencer, and Renée Taylor.
You can watch the full interview with Robert Meyer Burnett by clicking on the link below:
Bawden, who is the Marketing Director for Imagination Connoisseurs Unlimited, the company he formed with Burnett that is producing True Noir, said the mission of the company is to develop new IPs in the genre entertainment space. “We want to focus on specific fan niches. In this particular case, we looked at the crime and suspense area. We found a really great creator in Max Allan Collins who has a really interesting character hook in the True Noir thing,” he said. “The fan support has really taken off. We’ve already reached about 43% of our Kickstarter goal after just one week.”
You can watch the full interview with Mike Bawden by clicking on the link below:
You can watch the Kickstarter Campaign video below and pre-order True Noir in digital format or Blu-ray on their Kickstarter page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/icullc/true-noir-the-assassination-of-anton-cermak-audio-drama
You can watch the San Diego Comic Con panel for True Noir below:
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