Julliard grads Elizabeth Marvel and Bill Camp, who shared star billing as Shakespeare’s ultimate power couple in the American Place Theatre production of "Macbeth" this winter, play a contemporary husband and wife in crisis in Ten Hundred Kings. The debut feature by AFI grad D.W. Maze, Kings finds young New Yorkers Caroline and Paul still numbed by the accidental death of their three-year-old, Alexander, in a playground mishap three years previously. Caroline’s a survivor whose extraordinary coping skills have enabled her to overcome her blindness to launch a successful legal career. Paul abandoned a promising career as an academic to work as a housepainter in order to put Caroline through law school. But, Alexander’s death has slowly sent Paul into a self-destructive spiral which Caroline appears unable to halt.

Originally from New York, Maze graduated from Williams College in 1992 with a philosophy degree and a half-hour 35mm short, The Snowman, that served as his ticket to AFI the following year. His first feature screenplay, Memoir, was optioned last year by Will Smith’s production company, and Maze is tentatively attached to direct that this fall. Kings is being made with private financing under the auspices of Intrinsic Value, whose partners Isen Robbins and Aimee Schoof share producing credit with James P. Towne, Maze’s Williams classmate and collaborator on Snowman. Robbins segued from production design to produce The Sticky Fingers of Time with Good Machine in 1996. He and Schoof formed Intrinsic the following year and have so far produced six micro-budget features including Philip Dolin’s B-Movie.

Kings shot for 23 days in Manhattan and Brooklyn beginning April 24. Also in the cast is writer-raconteur Malachy McCourt as the Columbia classics professor who remembers Paul as a star student and may yet give him another shot. Kings should be done early this fall; all rights are available.

Cast: Elizabeth Marvel, Bill Camp, Adam LeFevre, Malachy McCourt, Giovanni Cimmino, Lynn Cohen, John Seitz, Emilio Del Pozo. Crew: Producers, D.W. Maze, James P. Towne, Isen Robbins, Aimee Schoof; Screenwriter/Director, Maze; Cinematographer, Nils Kenaston; Production Designer, Evelyn Sakash; Editor, Towne. Contact: Granis Pictures, LLC, 35 West 92nd Street, New York, NY 10025. Tel: (212) 280-3400, Fax: (212) 280-7514.

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