The thriller movie “Reverence,” which was filmed in Chandler last year, is finally finished. The cast and crew are holding a private premiere this weekend to finally watch the final product.
Producer Jacob Snovel with SafeHouse Films said everyone was excited to see it and to take it to festivals.
“That’s the biggest thing, I guess, that it’s kind of been locked away in editing and fell behind a bit. It wasn’t as finished as we wanted it to be and as quickly as we wanted it to be,” he said. “So it’s kind of built a little more excitement for us to just get it out in the world. It’s crazy that it’s… about this time last year, we were prepping for the thing.”
He said that the best part of creating the film was the support they received from people in the community. Around 200 locals took part, and Snovel said he didn’t realize at first they had that many.
“That was my favorite part of it because that’s always what I’ve known Chandler could do,” he said.
Just because the film was in editing didn’t mean that the main cast and crew were sitting around. Snovel said they’ve all been busy since filming wrapped at the end of December last year. Among the key players, they’ve worked on around four films since then.
Snovel worked on the film “Anywhere,” which filmed scenes at Chandler Lake and Manvel Coffee Co. A whole group of people from Reverence also worked on a Lifetime movie called “My Professor’s Deadly Secret.”
Over the summer, Kyle Kauwika Harris - director of “Reverence” - directed “The Huntsman,” which was also filmed in Oklahoma. The film features Shawn Ash- more from the X-Men franchise, Garret Dillahunt from “Where the Crawdads Sing,” Elizabeth Mitchell from “Lost” and “The Purge: Election Year,” and Jessy Schram from “Unstoppable.”
“It’s really cool to feel like we’ve really started something, which is exactly what I wanted to do on the first day,” Snovel said.
Snovel said he was currently producing another film with Harris that was written and is being directed by John Fortson and featuring his daughter, Abby Ryder Fortson, known for playing Cassandra Lang in “Ant-Man,” and his wife and fellow screenwriter Christie Lynn Smith.
“Reverence” is set to go to film festivals before being available to the wider public.