The Paramount+ film, streaming December 15, stars Ben Foster, Toby Wallace, Jenna Ortega and Tommy Lee Jones.
Brian Helgeland’s Finestkind represents one of Hollywood’s longest struggles to bring a passion project to fruition.
The Oscar-winning screenwriter of Mystic River and director of such films as Legend, 42, A Knight’s Tale and Payback finished the script when he was 28. He’s now 62.
“The joke is that I wrote it before Toby Wallace and Jenna Ortega were born and Ben Foster was 10 years old. It’s very strange, but everything happens for a reason. I just had to wait for this whole cast to grow up so I could cast them,” he explained at the film’s West Hollywood premiere on Tuesday referring to his actors who star opposite Tommy Lee Jones, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Aaron Stanford, Scotty Tovar, Tim Daly, Lolita Davidovich and Clayne Crawford.
The film — produced by Gary Foster and Russ Krasnoff of Krasnoff/Foster Entertainment, Taylor Sheridan of Bosque Ranch and David C. Glasser of 101 Studios in association with MTV Entertainment Studios — is set and was shot in Helgeland’s hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts, with some scenes taking place on a boat that belonged to family friends of Helgeland. Needless to say, it’s the most personal film he’s ever made.
“The characters are commercial fishermen. My dad was a commercial fisherman and so was my grandfather and I fished when I got out of college,” he explained. “It was very surreal, almost like making a documentary.”
He also described it like pushing a boulder up a hill for many years due to the challenges in getting it across the finish line. After working with Heath Ledger on back-to-back films A Knight’s Tale and The Order, the two made a pact that Helgeland would wait for Ledger to star in the film once he was the right age for the lead role. Ledger passed away before that happened.
Then, Finestkind looked ready to roll with Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya and Ansel Elgort.
The fact that it got made gave the pair, and their many close collaborators, their own Hollywood ending, and it’s clear by speaking to both of them that it’s an experience they won’t forget.
“I’ve made a bunch of films and they’ve been some good experiences,” said Gary Foster, who has produced everything from Sleepless in Seattle and Daredevil to the TV series Community.
“This was the closest group of people I’ve ever worked with. Part of it is due to Brian because we knew how much this meant to him but another part was the fact that we were all living in a Residence Inn by Marriott in Braintree, Massachusetts. There wasn’t a lot around there so we spent many a night by the fire outside or in the parking lot. We just wanted to be with each other. It was very hard to walk away from this one and there were a lot of tears when we wrapped. It was a very special time in our lives.”
