Hollywood is officially returning to the North Okanagan.
Enderby native Rick Dugdale, president of Hollywood-based Enderby Entertainment, will serve as producer for the film Go With Me, based on a best-selling book.
Shooting is expected to start on Nov. 10 with many area locations to be used. The book is set in a Vermont logging town but the script sent to Dugdale’s company called for a small town in Oregon.
As he was reading the script, Dugdale knew his hometown region would be perfect for filming.
“Further scouting is to be done, but it looks like we’ll be using the North Okanagan region,” said Dugdale, who graduated from Enderby’s A.L. Fortune Secondary in 1995.
Oscar winner Sir Anthony Hopkins will team up again with director Daniel Alfredson (The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest) for Go With Me. The pair recently finished the film Kidnapping Freddy Heineken, the story of the kidnapping of the beer baron in the 1980s.
Dugdale said casting for the other major roles is still being done.
Go With Me is adapted from the 2008 novel by Castle Freeman Jr. about a young woman who returns to her hometown in the Pacific Northwest only to be harassed by an ex-cop turned crimelord named Blackway.
Forsaken by the locals and advised to leave town by the local sheriff, she instead turns to an ex-logger (Hopkins) and his sidekick to help her fight back against her sociopathic stalker.
Joe Gangemi and Gregory Jacobs are writing the adaptation.
Dugdale is producing for Enderby Entertainment alongside Lindsay Williams and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein for The Gotham Group.
Hopkins will also produce with Jacobs.
The movie Tomorrowland, starring Oscar winner George Clooney and Hugh Laurie, was shot in Enderby and Spallumcheen in 2013.
The film is expected to be released in May 2015.
