El Rico

What happens when a stuntman, actor/director and screenwriter walk into a Gold Coast bar? They come up with the concept for an action fantasy film that is already raising eyebrows in Hollywood no joke. Rene Perrin, Avelino `El Rico' Lescot and Susan Macguillicuddy are the trio behind The Black Sun, which recently took out the Most Ambitious Screenplay award at the 2015 International Action on Film Festival in Los Angeles.

The locals are hoping the added hype surrounding their screenplay will push the project into production and attract the eye of distributors. Lescot, a Gold Coast-based actor, stuntman and filmmaker who has worked on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Peter Pan and The Condemned, said The Black Sun incorporates several genres.

``It's enchanting and mystical,'' he said.
``It's a gypsy, action, adventure, romance, western with a strong supernatural feel that is set in the Pacific Islands, Mexico, China, New Zealand and here.
``At the moment the film industry needs something different but financially manageable and that's The Black Sun.''

He said The Black Sun's `twist ending' had helped draw attention to the project. The film follows a warrior's worldwide journey on the Matariki boat, which Lescot said is `like another star of the film'. Lescot and Perrin have an impressive international fanbase thanks to the success of their action film Among Dead Men. It won several awards for best fight choreography and generated considerable profits in DVD sales in Canada, Germany, Thailand, Cambodia, Poland, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Hong Kong. It also grossed several times its $7000 budget in DVD sales through Walmart in the US. Perrin, who has worked as a stunt performer on films such as The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Daybreakers, Nim's Island, Fool's Gold and Ghost Ship, said they wanted to combine their `love of action with a love of romance' in The Black Sun.

Balancing out the testosterone on the team is screenwriter Susan Macguillicuddy. Despite having worked with the likes of Cate Blanchett, Jessica Alba, Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffiths, Macguillicuddy said working with `the boys' on The Black Sun has been her `most cherished writing experience'.

``It's like we each started at one end of the canvas and worked our way to the middle, fine-tuning the parts of the script we liked,'' she said.
``It took us about a year and hundreds of meetings but we're happy with the finished product.
``We wanted to do something very avant garde with the genre and something new.
``Getting the Most Ambitious Screenplay award means we really pushed the genre, which is what we set out to do.''

International distributors have shown interest in The Black Sun and the trio is currently in the process of looking for investors.