A strong new cast has come together for Fog City, a noir drama from filmmaker Dan Pritzker. “Cooper Koch, Angus Imrie, Sarah Bolger, Miranda Otto and Carla Gugino” have all signed on to lead the film,which mixes real history with fiction in a story set in San Francisco.
Fog City is set during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, during the Great Depression. The story follows several characters whose lives cross paths in the city during that period, blending true historical events with invented drama. Real-world construction on the Golden Gate Bridge ran from 1933 to 1937, placing the story squarely within one of the most transformative periods in the city’s history, when San Francisco was rapidly changing even as the rest of the country struggled through the Depression.
Carla Gugino plays Inez Burns, a woman who secretly performs abortions in the city. Cooper Koch takes on the role of Steven Walsh, a police inspector. Sarah Bolger plays Liza Orr, someone who has moved to San Francisco after leaving the Dust Bowl behind. Miranda Otto plays Dorothy Hargrove, a socialite involved in blackmail, while Angus Imrie plays her son, Martin.
Inez Burns is based on a real person from San Francisco history. Born in 1886, she ran a large underground abortion practice in the city for decades, at a time when the procedure was illegal across the country. Her work is estimated to have reached tens of thousands of women over the years, and she became known both for her wealth and for her many connections to local police and politicians, which helped her stay in business for so long. Her story has since become the subject of multiple books, and now forms one of the central threads running through Fog City.
Dan Pritzker, who has earlier directed the historical drama Bolden and the silent film Louis, is directing Fog City from his own script. He is producing the film along with Emmy nominee Jon Cornick and Michele Tayler, with Richard Arlook serving as executive producer. The film is currently in production and is expected to shoot through October, with filming taking place across both San Francisco and Melbourne. The supporting cast includes Perry “Pez” Warner, Les Hill, Johnny Carr, Robert Coleby, Russell Dykstra and David Wenham.
Speaking about the project, Dan Pritzker said it was a privilege to work on a story about San Francisco, a city he loves, and that he was excited to bring together such a talented cast and crew to tell it.
Cooper Koch recently earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his lead performance in “Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”. He has also appeared in Swallowed and Peacock’s They/Them, and will next star in Artificial, a film about Sam Altman directed by Luca Guadagnino. Angus Imrie, who also appears in Artificial alongside Cooper Koch, has previously featured in “Emma., Mickey 17, The Crown and Fleabag”.
Sarah Bolger, known for her Independent Spirit Award-nominated role in In America, currently stars in MGM+’S The Westies and will next appear in Control alongside James McAvoy and Julianne Moore. Miranda Otto, who won acclaim for her role in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, has also appeared in “War of the Worlds, Homeland and Talk to Me”. Carla Gugino, a recent Critics Choice Award nominee for The Friend, has also appeared in Heads of State alongside Idris Elba and John Cena, will next star opposite Brad Pitt in David Fincher’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth.
With production already underway and a cast spanning several generations of acclaimed film and television work, ‘Fog City’ is shaping up to be one of the more anticipated noir dramas heading into production this year. The project also continues a pattern in Dan Pritzker’s work of building narrative films around real historical figures and events, as he did with Bolden, his earlier drama based on the life of Jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden, suggesting Fog City will likely take a similar approach in blending Inez Burns real story with the fictional threads woven around her.
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