DENVER - Main Man Films has signed on to produce a feature film based on the bestselling memoir "Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship" by Denver author Cathie Beck. Filming is expected to begin in 2017, with completion anticipated in 2018.
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We are committed to showcasing projects with strong female characters, and I am honored to be associated with such an important story," says Producer Arthur O. Thomas, founder of Main Man Films, an international digital creation and film production company based in Englewood, Colorado.
Thomas notes that many in the film industry think that female-driven content isn't commercially viable. But according to the Motion Picture Association of America, female moviegoers outnumber male audience members. And, films with a female protagonist regularly out-earn male-led movies.
"Producing 'Cheap Cabernet' is a good business decision for Main Man Films," Thomas says. "But we also believe it's important to share stories that are told from a uniquely female perspective that is often overlooked."
"Cheap Cabernet" is an often-funny and always-sincere story about female friendship. Beck was a teenage mother who, harboring vivid memories of her own hardscrabble childhood, spent years doing whatever it took to give her children the stability she never had. She managed to educate them and herself, too, and with her kids in college, Beck was finally ready to have some fun. The problem was, she had no idea how to do it and no friends to do it with. So she invented a women's group and placed a newspaper ad; eight women showed up to the first meeting, and out of that group a once-in-a-lifetime friendship formed.
Beck self-published "Cheap Cabernet" in 2009; Hyperion Books published the memoir in 2010. It has been a Denver Post Best Sellers book five times and is the only memoir named a "Great Group Read" by the National Women's Book Association. The book also was a 2011 Books for a Better Life Award honoree.
The book will be adapted for screen by Trai Cartwright, a screenwriter and entertainment industry veteran who has written screenplays for Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning producers, as well as Main Man's 2016 film "Secret Ellington." As a development executive she worked for Paramount Pictures, New Line Cinema, HBO, 20th Century Fox, and Universal Studios. Cartwright is a writing and film studies professor at Colorado Film School and the University of Northern Colorado and is a founding member of the Colorado Smart Film Investment Coalition.
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