A major motion picture filmed in Fort Worth is set to hit cinemas on June 28.
“The Last Whistle,” directed by Fort Worth native Rob Smat, will premiere in theaters across Los Angeles, New York and Dallas-Fort Worth. The film will also be available on all digital platforms, such as iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and Vudu.
The film was Lone Star Film Festival 2018 opener. It went on to win Best Picture awards at this year’s Deep In The Heart Film Festival and Australian Inspirational Film Festival.
It portrays the struggles a high school football team in a small-town face after one of its player collapses on the field from a rare heart condition who later dies.
Brad Leland, of “Friday Night Lights” fame, stars in the critically-acclaimed football drama, alongside Jim O’Heir, of “Parks and Recreation”; Eric Nelsen, two-time Emmy award winner and Les Miles, the BCS Championship-winning coach.
Apart from director Smat, Leland and producer Thomas Kitzler are also fellow Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex natives.
“Fort Worth was just a place where I had the most resources, the most support,” Smat told Business Press in a previous story.
He further added: “In Fort Worth, you can really shoot something where you’ve got both this very new bells and whistles look, [and] at the same time there’s horse-drawn carriages coming down the street. And I love that about Fort Worth, especially when it comes to dramas, sports movies and thrillers; it’s a really vibrant look to shoot a motion picture.”
Utilizing the local resources, Smat finished filming “The Last Whistle” for an estimated cost of $500,000, a relatively inexpensive project.
During filming, the Fort Worth Film Commission guided the producers to suitable locations and also provided crew members when needed.
The film has been featured at several Fort Worth tourism events since its world premiere in November.
Tim Love, the local favorite and nationally renowned chef, also offered his restaurants as locations for filming.
Love owns several restaurants at Fort Worth Stockyards, namely: White Elephant Saloon, Love Shack and Lonesome Dove Western Bistro.
A part of the movie’s score includes a song by popular Texas country singer Pat Green, also a Fort Worth native, and George Durham, a morning host on sports talk station The Ticket (KTCK)..
“It’s really nice to film in [a] place like Fort Worth,” Smat previously told Business Press, “where it’s not a common thing and where people share in that excitement that I still have about movie-making and those things.”
Read more about the film and Director Rob Smat: http://www.fortworthbusiness.com/news/briefs/filming-in-fort-worth-fw-native-leverages-city-as-movie/article_8ec23944-838c-11e8-b903-eb00233dcce5.html
For more on the film: www.lastwhistlemovie.com/
Last Whistle is showing at the Studio Movie Grill on Spring Valley in Dallas:
www.studiomoviegrill.com/locations/texas/spring-valley/2019/6/28