Casting begins for TV3?s new Soap ?Red Rock?.

TV3 PRESS RELEASE

IMMEDIATE: Tuesday 5th August 2014

 

 

Casting begins for TV3’s new Soap ‘Red Rock’.

 

Leading Irish Casting Director Louise Kiely and team will kick off the casting process for TV3’s brand new soap ‘Red Rock’.

 

Open casting sessions will begin in Dublin on 9th and 10th August and regional casting sessions will follow in Cork, Limerick, Belfast and Galway.

 

The ‘Red Rock’ casting team are looking to represent the diversity of contemporary culture and ethnicities in Ireland as well as different age groups.

 

‘Red Rock’ will go into production this autumn and will be produced by Element Pictures and Company Pictures. The series creator and chief writer is Peter McKenna.

 

 

The casting process for TV3’s brand new soap ‘Red Rock’ will get underway this weekend with two Dublin casting sessions at the John Player Factory. Casting will take place under the directorship and watchful eye of Louise Kiely and people will be seen on a first come, first served basis.

 

Louise Kiely has built her reputation as one of Ireland’s leading casting directors, and has cast a number of up-and-coming Irish actors in successful films, including Jack Reynor in the critically acclaimed ‘What Richard Did’, the BBC series ‘Quirke’ as well as the Irish casting on ‘Ripper Street’ and ‘The Sea’.

 

Over the next three weeks a casting team made up of Louise Kiely, Thyrza Ging, Eva-Jane Gaffney, Allen Kiely, Karen Scully and Jane Barry will see over 2,200 people across key casting sessions held in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Belfast and Galway. The team are hoping to represent the diversity of contemporary culture and ethnicities in Ireland as well as different age groups.

 

Red Rock will go into production this autumn and will be produced by Element Pictures and Company Pictures. The series creator and chief writer is Peter McKenna.

 

Hinting at what they’ll be looking for from the scheduled casting sessions, Louise Kiely said: “We are super excited to get started. There will be a ticket system at each of the venues, on a first come, first seen basis! We can see 500 per day in Dublin and 300 per day in the other cities. In order to get seen, I would advise getting there early. If we cannot see you on the day, we shall accept self-tapes in the coming months. We would ask that people prepare a Film/TV monologue of a minute in length. We are creating a whole town, cast-wise, from the ground up. What a cool challenge! For more details check out our Facebook page www.facebook.com/LouiseKielyCasting.  

 

The ‘Red Rock’ casting team are unlikely to cast anyone still attending secondary school outside the Dublin area as it uneconomic and impractical for them to travel outside of school hours.

 

More details on the regional casting sessions will be issued in the coming days. For more information on the casting process visit www.louisekiely.com or www.facebook.com/LouiseKielyCasting.

 

 

See ‘Notes to Editor’ for all scheduled casting sessions and more information on Louise Kiely.

 

Pictures have been sent to your picture desks and are available on request.

 

 

ENDS

 

 

For further information
Ciara Byrne – Press Officer – 01 419 3329/087 319 9732

Jean O’Donovan – Press & Publicity Assistant – 01 419 3428

Sharon McHugh – Head of Press & Publicity – 087 922 4143

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Notes to Editor

 

DUBLIN CASTINGS

 

Dates:            9th and 10th August.

Time:             10:00 – 16:00 (Doors open from 9am)

Team:            Louise Kiely, Thyrza Ging, Eva-Jane Gaffney, Allen Kiely and Jane Barry

Venue:           The John Player Factory, entrance on Donore Avenue

500 people max. Tickets on arrival: 1-250 morning and 251-500 afternoon and evening. Everyone after that will be given instructions about how and what to self-tape and they will be reviewed online.

 

REGIONAL CASTINGS

 

About Louise Kiely

www.louisekiely.com

 

 

CORK

Dates:            16th August

Time:             TBC

Team:            Thyrza Ging, Eva Jane Gaffney, Jane Barry

Venue:           TBC

300 people max. Tickets on arrival: 1-150 morning and 151-300 afternoon and evening.

 

 

LIMERICK

Dates:            16th August

Time:             TBC

Team:            Louise Kiely, Karen Scully, Allen Kiely

Venue:           TBC

300 people max. Tickets on arrival: 1-150 morning and 151-300 afternoon and evening.

 

 

BELFAST

Dates:            23rd August

Time:             TBC

Team:            Louise Kiely, Karen Scully, Allen Kiely

Venue:           TBC 

300 people max. Tickets on arrival: 1-150 morning and 151-300 afternoon and evening.

 

GALWAY

Dates:            23rd August

Time:             TBC

Team:            Thyrza Ging, Eva Jane Gaffney, Jane Barry

Venue:           TBC 

300 people max. Tickets on arrival: 1-150 morning and 151-300 afternoon and evening.

 

Element Pictures

Element Pictures, which is jointly run by Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, with offices in Dublin and London, is most notable for successful movie productions like The Guard, What Richard Did and Garage and Palme d’Or winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley. TV Shows include the Gabriel Byrne series Quirke and the upcoming Charlie for RTE. Element also distribute films and own the Light House Cinema in Smithfield. Ed Guiney previously worked on productions like Bachelors Walk and Pure Mule.

 

 

More about Element Pictures

Element Pictures works across production, distribution and exhibition. Upcoming Element productions include Yorgos Lanthimos’ first English language film, The Lobster, due to shoot in Ireland in Spring 2014 and Room, an onscreen adaptation of Emma Donaghue’s award-winning best-selling novel to be directed by Lenny Abrahamson. In post-production is Charlie, a three-part drama for RTÉ with Touchpaper Television, starring Aiden Gillen as Charlie Haughey, and Glassland, Gerard Barrett’s follow up feature to the critically acclaimed Pilgrim Hill, starring Jack Reynor and Toni Collette. Current productions include Abrahamson’s latest film Frank, starring Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson and Maggie Gyllenhaal, which premiered to great acclaim at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and will screen at South by Southwest 2014 in March, and Ken Loach’s upcoming film Jimmy’s Hall, a co-production with Sixteen Films. Other recent films include What Richard Did (Lenny Abrahamson), starring Jack Reynor, which opened to great acclaim at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival; Shadow Dancer (James Marsh) starring Clive Owen and Andrea Riseborough; The Guard (John Michael McDonagh), starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle (currently the most successful independent Irish film of all time); and The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach), starring Cillian Murphy, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

 

Element Pictures Distribution handles all of STUDIOCANAL’s slate in Ireland including The Double, Rush, The Bling Ring and Broken Circle Breakdown, and past films Beasts of the Southern Wild, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Submarine, and Carnage; Element Pictures Distribution also handles direct acquisitions such as Pilgrim Hill, What Richard Did, Silence, Grabbers, The Guard, Parked, Sensation, and Garage.

 

Element also operates an online video on demand platform, Volta.ie, which focuses on the finest of Irish and international films. Additionally, Element runs and operates the Light House Cinema, one of Dublin’s premiere art house cinemas, screening the best of Irish and world cinema, as well as re-runs of classics and special events and seasons, ranging from celebrating the works of the Coen brothers to that of Ennio Morricone. 

Company Pictures

Company Pictures is best known in the UK for hit TV shows such as Skins and Shameless.

 

Company Pictures is under the direction of John Yorke, previously the Controller of Drama Production at the BBC and Head of Drama at Channel 4 - responsible for, amongst many others Life On Mars, Shameless, Bodies, Holby City, Casualty and Waterloo Road. He was Executive Producer of EastEnders from 2000-2002 where he introduced a fourth weekly episode and was responsible for big ratings winners such as "Who Shot Phil?", Ethel Skinner's death, Jim Branning and Dot Cotton's marriage Trevor and Little Mo’s abuse story, and Kat Slater's revelation to her daughter Zoe that she was her mother.

 

More about Company Pictures

Company Pictures is one of the UK's largest independent film and television drama production companies.

 

Established in 1998 by Charlie Pattinson and George Faber, television production highlights include Elizabeth I (winner of three Golden Globes, four Primetime EMMYs and an Ivor Novello Award), eleven series' of Shameless (Channel 4: BAFTA, RTS, Broadcast, British Comedy, IFTA, Indie, Remark, Mental Health Media and International EMMY awards winner), seven series' of Wild at Heart, seven series' of Skins (E4/Channel 4), seven George Gently films (BBC 1), Generation Kill written by the creators of The Wire (HBO; Gracie and three Creative EMMY awards), The Devils Whore (Channel 4: three RTS and two Broadcasting Press Guild Awards), The Silence starring Maxine Peake and (BBC1: AMI Award for Best Television Drama, two IFTA Awards and a Crime Thriller Award), The Shadow Line starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christopher Ecclestone and Rafe Spall (BBC1: Writers Guild and Crime Thriller awards winner), Beaver Falls starring Samuel Robertson, Arsher Ali and John Dagleish (E4), Secret State starring Gabriel Byrne, Charles Dance and Rupert Graves (Channel 4: nominated for Best TV Movie International EMMY Award), The Village starring Maxine Peake and John Simm (BBC1) and The White Queen starring Rebecca Ferguson and Max Irons (BBC1).

 

In the past Company Pictures has produced The Lakes by Jimmy McGovern, A Young Person's Guide to Being a Rockstar (RTS award Best Serial) for Channel 4 and Warner Bros, Not Only But Always... (Channel 4: BAFTA winner: Rhys Ifans Best Actor) and Life and Death of Peter Sellers (HBO: winner of two Golden Globe Awards for Best TV Movie and Best Actor for Geoffrey Rush and fifteen EMMYs).

Company has made five feature films with some of the UK's leading directing talent including films by Roger Michell, Stephen Hopkins, Penny Woolcock, Shane Meadows and Lynne Ramsey.

 

Amongst its numerous awards Company Pictures won Best Independent Production Company at the 2005 and 2008 Broadcast Awards and the European Producers of the Year Award at the 2004 Monte Carlo Awards.

 

Peter McKenna

Peter McKenna has written extensively for film, television and stage.  Most recently he has completed episodes of BBC One Drama Series Frankie and The Musketeers (Series 1 & 2) - and has just been commissioned by BBC to adapt the crime thriller, The Lost, for television. 

 

In 2010 Peter became the first Irish writer to be selected for the prestigious BBC Writers Academy. This led to him writing regularly for Doctors, EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City.

 

His television pilot, In Vitro, is in development with Company Pictures (London). And Peter has co-authored a romantic comedy Love Gods with Irish writer Brian Lynch, which has been optioned by Grand Pictures.

 

He is currently creating and writing a new soap for TV3 with the title Red Rock.

 

His other Irish television credits include On Home Ground (Littlebird/RTE), Fair City (RTE), Legend (Ice Box/RTE) and The Clinic (Parallel Productions/RTE), where he was appointed Head Writer and Story Consultant.

 

In 2009 he received both an Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) nomination and Irish Screenwriters & Playwrights Guild Zebbie Award nomination for "Best Television Script".

 

Peter has also written and directed two short films Bovine, and Racing Homer, which won the Irish Film Board "Short Cuts Award". And his critically acclaimed play Missing Football received the OZ Whitehead Award for Best Irish One Act Play.