’10 Items’ Gets Speedy Checkout

Take a Hollywood icon, a directorial whiz kid and the backing of a technology giant and what do you have? The express lane to the first pickup of the 2006 Toronto Film Festival. Morgan Freeman, the Academy Award® winning actor and Hollywood legend, teams up with Brad Silberling (”Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”) in an eclectic homespun friendship flick ”10 Items or Less”. The film was partly financed by computer technology giant Intel, and has reportedly been picked up by ThinkFilm for distribution in late 2006 or early 2007.

The film follows the story of a Hollywood legend (Freeman) whose career choices have dwindled as his fear of failure has grown with each passing year. Finally settling for a part in a small independent film, the actor finds himself caught in unfamiliar territory in Los Angeles and abandoned by his driver. At a Latino market, Freeman meets Scarlet (Paz Vega), a young checkout clerk who turns out to be his hope for returning to his side of the tracks, and to the revelations and friendship that neither one expected.

Freeman plays himself in the film; however, his life is far from the desolate career wasteland of the film version, rather he has 10 projects listed for 2006 alone. Silberling too has another project in the pipeline with his contribution to the pot of films regarding the current civil unrest in Africa. From his earliest directorial ventures on television, through 1998s “City of Angels” and the previously mentioned “Lemony Snicket”, Silberling has made a name for himself as a sound investment. The ThinkFilm distribution deal continues this success. ThinkFilm plans to offer distribution to large metropolitan areas initially, followed by availability approximately 2 weeks later on the broadband entertainment network devised by Intel.