A taste of Hollywood feel takes center stage tomorrow night in downtown Jacksonville as the Illinois Theater will host a movie premiere red carpet event.
Independent Loami, Illinois-based filmmaker Ash Hamilton, along with many of his cast of characters, will usher in the premiere of “F’d: Tales from the End Times“.
F’d: Tales from the End Times was shot in 2023 and tells multiple stories that all take place during the world’s end. The horror film uses multiple directors and features many extras from the Jacksonville area.
Portions of the film were shot on location at Danenberger Vinyards near New Berlin, and Hamilton says when they went looking for what he calls the linchpin location for the film, they found it here in Jacksonville at the former MacMurray campus.
I think it was my wife who said I think MacMurray in Jacksonville could be an option. We went on the campus and there was a spot that we just fell in love with. We were like this is exactly what we need because we can put our camera here, we’ve got this enormous fog smoke machine we can put it and the industrial fans over here, and it was just everything we were looking for.
What was even crazier was the response that we got locally in looking for extras. One day alone we had almost 90 ninety people out there wanting to be extras. And if you’re trying to make something look chaotic and big and crazy, if you’ve got people running around everywhere- it sells it, it really sells it.”
The film has been making its way around the film festival circuit and has already played in several areas including London and Los Angeles, and has even collected an award nomination to two along the way.
The Illinois Theater red carpet premiere comes just ahead of the film’s release on several streaming platforms in early 2025. Hamiton says holding a premiere here in Jacksonville became a must-have event after their experience working on the film in the community.
“We wanted to make sure though that something was bigger and more of a very centralized sort of event here in Jacksonville, like that was very very important to us. So many people helped us out here. So many people turned out. We had so many people that were in the film in one capacity or another as extras that we really wanted to do something in a theater.
We wanted people to come in, we wanted to roll out a red carpet, we wanted to do a step and repeat wall so we could all take photos. We wanted to get as many of the actors here as possible so that everyone here can realize that it’s not just about filming here. It’s about coming back and saying look what this is a part of now. Look at all the people who have recognized that everyone here did such a fantastic job.
You guys are playing in countries where they had to dub this already and we didn’t have distribution back then. So I want to give that experience to people, to first of all see it in the theater. Because it’s a very big movie for a very small budget, and to be able to see some of the things that we pulled off that I don’t think people at all are expecting.”
The F’d: Tales from the End Times Red Carpet Premiere starts at 7:30 Saturday night at the Illinois Theater in Downtown Jacksonville.
A special raffle for signed copies of the movie poster, signed vinyl records of the soundtrack, and a Blu-ray of Ash’s previous film Holes in the Sky: the Sean Miller Story will be held.
An after-party will also be held at KJB’s where there will be a celebration of the film featuring an apocalyptic cake from downtown Jacksonville’s own Holly Cakes Bakery.
Tickets are going fast. To order tickets: https://www.internet-ticketing.com/websales/sales/ILLJAC/start?film=1303&fbclid=IwY2xjawGceZJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTkUFCMP92u7UCZZsMmsXe0CcB18wzMU07J_IwRQhXneuenWudN8ynKGyQ_aem_nQup–Nz7_gtQEZShQw2wA