Andres Baiz leads Giamatti and Mackie to Babylon

Here is another story of how an actor can board a project from a first or second-time filmmaker and give the project wings. Paul Giamatti (and Anthony Mackie) have joined Andres Baiz on the project set to begin filming in February in the hot sands of Jamaica.

Scribe Ian Stone’s Babylon sees Mackie play a Rasta from the isolated hills of Jamaica and Giamatti will play a British minister, both of whom accompany a 12-year-old Jamaican boy from the Kingston ghetto as they try to outrun gangsters. Stick N Stone will finance, with Stone Douglass and Mickey Barold producing.

Baiz is a short film filmmaker and NYU Tisch School of the Arts grad who most recently worked on Maria Full of Grace as a location scout  and saw his first feature film (Satanás) win the award for Best Colombian Film of the year.

Giamatti will make his way over to Sundance next month for the world premiere of Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls which I’m really looking forward to seeing and Mackie gets to showcase his take on Tupac Shakur in a mid January release as well with the Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious.