Forrest Gump Star to Direct New Hallmark Movie

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Camera captures actors on film set

A new Hallmark film, Spring Breakthrough, has just started filming in Mobile, Alabama. Though the network hasn’t announced who is starring in the flick, a familiar face will be behind the camera. According to AL.com, renowned actor and director Mykelti Williamson, who played Bubba opposite Tom Hanks in the 1994 classic Forrest Gump, is in Mobile to direct the film, including mentoring hundreds of extras who are the casting agents for the film have searched. Here’s what you need to know:

New Hallmark film will feature “Luxurious Resort” and wedding scenes with a large number of extras

GettyMykelti Williamson at a film premiere in New York in March 2022

While Williamson is perhaps best known for his acting roles, most recently as Preston Webb in the second season of Law & Order: Organized Crime, he also often works behind-the-scenes as a director on television series such as Chicago Med, Chicago PD ‘ and ‘Sweet Magnolias’.

On January 30, 2023, Alabama casting agency Goleman Casting posted a Facebook photo by Williamson stopping by for a pre-production meeting on his upcoming Hallmark film.

On February 13, Goleman Casting LLC posted on Facebook that it was the first day of shooting for the film and that there were still hundreds of extras to be hired for the film. Accordingly Mobile NBC-TV affiliate 15 News, The Alabama Film Office confirmed that the three-week Hallmark film shoot will take place on the Spring Hill College campus.

Related to Goleman’s Contributions In terms of the kind of extras being looked for, the film will feature scenes at a resort and an open-air market. For example, they were looking for 40 people to play “market shoppers” and 10 more to pretend to be “vendors with pop-up shops and tents at an open-air market” to close on February 22nd film.

Meanwhile, they were also looking for over 100 extras – both children and adults – to play guests and staff at a luxury resort. They needed to be comfortable in the water, the casting call said, as they will be filming in the pool on February 23-24.

Filming over the next week will include filming people playing diners at the resort’s “Roots Restaurant and the Patio Cafe,” having fun at a tiki party, and attending the wedding of a character named Vivian, which will be filmed on March 3 becomes. Vivian is likely one of the film’s main characters, as Goleman has also been working on casting a child – a black woman aged between five and eight – to play “young Vivian” in a flashback that airs on September 27. to be filmed in February.

Extras on Spring Breakthrough can expect $125 for 12-hour days. When someone on Facebook asked if that was correct, someone at the agency replied, “That’s a pretty common phrase for background work in the Southeast US film industry.”

Mykelti Williamson hinted at future directing roles in a recent interview

GettyActors Tom Hanks and Mykelti Williamson attend the 22nd Annual Critics’ Choice Awards in December 2016

Williamson, who will turn 66 on March 4 just as Spring Breakthrough wraps, has been an actor since he was 18. In July 2022 he has said Closer Weekly that he was infected with acting from an early age.

“I did a play at my mother’s and aunt’s church,” he recalls. “A stage mom took her son out of the play on a Friday night. My aunt called. They drew me in and I went and watched the other kids perform the play, script in hand. On Sunday we went live and I was out of the book getting a standing ovation. That was the moment I said, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ I was about 7 or 8 years old.”

While the role of Bubba in “Forrest Gump” was a huge win, he told Andscape in June 2022 that he was then typecast as a Southerner with a swollen lip — which he actually didn’t have.

“As a transformative character actor, it took a while for people to understand that,” he said. “So I hired a publicist to show my true colors next to Bubba Blue’s face so people can say, ‘Oh yeah! I saw that cat!’ And so I ended up spending the money I originally made on Gump, reinvesting it and saving my career.”

While he’s found great success as an actor, he told Closer Weekly he’s looking forward to more future work as a director.

“I’ve been a director since the ’70s, but I put it on hold until five years ago,” he said. “I’m passionate about making really good films that represent humanity at the highest level and shatter stereotypes. That’s where I’m going.”

Spring Breakthrough isn’t actually Williamson’s first Hallmark film. He made a Guest appearance in Hallmark’s “About the Holiday Stocking” In December.