We screened In My Sleep in the market at the Cannes Film Festival and got a fantastic response. It was quite thrilling to watch the movie in a theater with an international audience and hear them laugh and scream at all the right places. Later, people stopped me on the streets to tell me how much they enjoyed the film. A local movie poster store even put up our poster in their front window!

The day after our screening, I got a list of people who attended and saw that a reviewer from The Hollywood Reporter was in the audience. I sent him an email to ask him if there was any additional information he wanted about our movie. He emailed me back and said "If you've read my review on-line, you'll know it couldn't get more positive. Congratulations. You are a versatile talent."

I immediately searched Hollywood Reporter's website for the review. I quickly read it and was blown away at how positive it was. He loved our movie! It was midnight in Cannes and I just got the first professional review of my filmmaking career.

I got on the phone and started making calls. I reached our lead actor Philip in England and read the review to him over the phone. He was ecstatic. I then called anyone else I could reach. I felt like I was living out a scene in a movie where the Broadway show opens and the reviews were just published in the papers. Except this was real!

I was up until well into the morning, calling and emailing people. I was too energized to sleep. The next day, the review was published in the print version of The Hollywood Reporter and momentum was on our side.

Within a week of Cannes, our foreign sales company had sold In My Sleep to over 30 countries around the world and they continue to do so. We are currently working on the distribution strategy for the U.S. and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you. Our movie is finally coming out! I'm very excited about that.

Click here to check out the review online.

Hollywood Reporter review of In My Sleep
By Duane Byrge
Bottom Line: A sexy, well-made thriller.

CANNES -- A happening guy from West L.A. beds a lot of beauties, but he wakes up one morning with blood in his bed and all over his torso. How did it get there and whose is it? That's the deadly question in "In My Sleep," a well-stirred titillation that will appeal to twentysomething audiences and movie-buff viewers who appreciate the pursued-pursuer, Hitchcockian style of suspenser.

In this savvy entertainment, Marcus (Philip Winchester) has it going: a shiny new Volvo, a gig at an upscale health spa and a winning smile. He's also got a problem with the ladies: He loves them and forgets them. Not because he's crass or insensitive, but because he's a parasomniac -- he does things in his sleep he'd never do while awake and blacks out on what has happened. Not surprisingly, this rankles some female sensibilities, but conscientious Marcus sincerely tries to right his ways, seeking medical help as well as enrolling in a sexaholics group.

Filmmaker Allen Wolf torques this high-concept premise to darkest dimension: Marcus' best friend's wife has been brutally knifed to death, and he fears he may have done it. He also is a very decent guy, who can't believe he would have been capable of such a horrific crime. With circumstantial evidence mounting against him, he must truly figure out who the killer is, even if it is him, before he is arrested.

"In My Sleep" works because the protagonist, while flawed, is completely likable and honorable. Philip Winchester exudes an integrity, as well as a gritty determination, which makes us root for him.

Supporting characters are also convincing, a tribute to the well-assembled cast. In particular, Lacey Chabert is winning as Marcus' adoring neighbor, while Tim Draxl is sympathetic as Marcus' best friend and husband of the murdered woman. Abigail Spencer flexes a steely guile as the estranged sister who accelerates the investigation against Marcus.

Narratively, "In My Sleep" never rests, a credit to the tight, psychologically astute pacing of filmmaker Wolf and editor Peter Devaney Flanagan. In like dark vein, cinematographer Michael Hardwick's taut compositions and vivid scopings magnify this nocturnal horror story.

Some of the key people behind In My Sleep are also behind some of the biggest blockbusters now playing at a theater near you.

One of the stars of In My Sleep, Lacey Chabert, co-stars in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past as Jennifer Garner's sister.

Lacey recalls that when she read the script for this comedy, her character "jumped off the page" to her. She says she loves "the heart of the movie and all the themes that bring together an important message." The movie stars Matthew McConaughey as a celebrity photographer who loves freedom, fun and women (in that order!). The movie opened May 1st and was #2 in the box office right behind...

Wolverine! XMen Origins: Wolverine was produced by our Executive Producer, Ralph Winter. This mega-budget blockbuster movie is a major thrill ride. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as a fierce fighting man who possesses healing powers, retractable claws and a primal fury. One reviewer calls the movie "a fast-paced spectacle with action, drama, romance, wry humor and technical wizardry... Jackman has elevated his skills to new heights."

Wolverine grossed an estimated $87 million from 4,099 theaters to mark Fox studio's best-ever non-holiday bow at the domestic box office. Facing Wolverine head-on this weekend is Star Trek.

Star Trek was cast by our own Casting Director, Alyssa Weisberg. The Hollywood Reporter writes "Paced at warp speed with spectacular action sequences rendered brilliantly and with a cast so expert that all the familiar characters are instantly identifiable." Empire Magazine writes "The most exhilarating Trek to date." Variety writes "Blasting onto the screen at warp speed and remaining there for two hours, the new and improved Star Trek will transport fans to sci-fi nirvana."

Interestingly, Ralph Winter helped produce the original Star Trek movies. The tradition of excellence lives on.

I look forward to showing you what the collaboration of this spectacular team of people did for In My Sleep.

While I was watching a TV show last week, an ad came on for a Dateline special about a sleepwalking killer. On the commercial, they quote the killer saying "I think I might have killed Eva IN MY SLEEP." Then, they put the words "In My Sleep" at the center of the TV. I couldn't believe it!

While writing the script for "In My Sleep," I was well aware of the history of sleepwalking murders but it was startling to hear about a similar case happening so recently. While you'll have to wait to see what happens in the movie, you can find out what happened to this "sleepwalking killer" right here:

Last year, while we were editing In My Sleep, we created a trailer for the movie and posted it on YouTube. I mainly did this to give friends a glimpse into the movie while we finished everything. Soon a few hundred people had watched it, then one thousand. The viewers kept building slowly each week. I was very excited when we cracked the 5,000 mark. Then, something happened at the end of 2008. The buzz suddenly started to build and we started getting 1,000 views per day! I just checked the site and we have now reached over 70,000 views. This, for a film that we haven't even advertised.

It is very exciting to get comments from all over the world and to hear of people's excitement for seeing the movie. We're putting the final touches on it this week so we're almost there. Then, we'll start the job of finding the right distributor so it can be in a theater near you. Here's the link for the trailer.



Thanks for all your support!

We have a saying that we frequently use in movie production - "hurry up and wait." That describes when you quickly get ready for something and then something happens to delay the final result. I feel like we've been living that saying as we've been working to finish up the movie!

We are currently completing the credits for In My Sleep. While we were in the middle of this process, we discovered that one of our post production facilities made a mistake and left off a few seconds from the shot at the beginning of the movie that has our opening credits superimposed over it. The only solution was to track down the original footage which took some time. On Monday, that footage is being sent to our visual effects studio who will then have what they need to finish the credits.

By the end of the first week of January, the credits will be completed. Then, they will be added to the film along with two other shots. Next, the sound will be synched up with the picture and put onto the high definition master tapes.

Then, the movie will be consolidated. It is currently divided into 6 different reels. This is to facilitate the movie being transferred to film stock and shown in theaters. When you see a movie in a theater, you are actually seeing 20 minute reels of film that have been linked together while they are being projected (unless it is being projected digitally). So, this next stage will be combining each reel onto a final high definition tape. Too many details?

At that point, the movie will be finished. Woohoo! The next stage will be screening In My Sleep for distributors. I am frequently asked "when is the movie coming out?" I'll know in the next several months.

Meanwhile, Philip's show, Crusoe, will end its run at the end of January. It started off strong, winning its time slot for the first two weeks. Then, CBS put on a very popular show on Friday nights which crushed all the competition. NBC moved Crusoe to Saturday nights where it will finish out its run. People tell me all the time how much they love it so it will be sad to see it go. It was unique in that it was one of the few shows on network television that families could watch together. If you haven't had a chance to see any of the shows, you can view them online by clicking here.

Interestingly, Forbes.com recently published an article about how big name stars statistically do not guarantee box office success. In the article, S. Abraham Ravid, a professor of finance at Rutgers University and a visiting professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, concluded that a film's star had no impact on the movie's rate of return. He says definitively: "Star participation has no statistical correlation with the success of a movie, no matter how you define 'a star' or how you define 'success.'"

Jehoshua Eliashberg, who has been studying the topic for the better part of two decades as a professor of marketing, operations and information management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is of the same opinion: "A movie star does not guarantee the commercial success of a movie," he says, "but a commercially successful movie will often make its actor a star."

Interesting, isn't it? You can read the entire article by clicking here.

I'll tell you more news as soon as I get it. Meanwhile, have a wonderful Christmas and a terrific holiday season.