THE LOOP - Production starts Nov 2

RACHEL NICHOLS AND JACKSON HURST JOIN CAST OF THE LOOP
MARGARET WHITTON DIRECTS OFF-BEAT ROMANCE
BASED ON ROGER TOWNE’S ADAPTATION OF NOVEL BY JOE COOMER

Filming Begins November 2nd in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Production marks first film from New York indie Tashtego Films

SANTA FE, NM – October 2009

Rachel Nichols and Jackson Hurst to ride THE LOOP!

Rachel Nichols (“GI Joe,” Star Trek”) and Jackson Hurst (“Drop Dead Diva,” Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life”) are boarding to star in Margaret Whitton’s feature directing debut “The Loop” -- an off-beat romance with a screenplay by Roger Towne (“The Recruit,” “The Natural”), based on the 1992 novel by Joe Coomer.

Warren Spector is executive producer and Steven Tabakin is producer through New York independent Tashtego Films, with Greg Schultz joining as co-producer.

Linda Emond, Buck Henry, Matte Osian, and Rocco Sisto have also been cast.

Hurst plays an isolated Courtesy Patrol Driver who cruises the New Mexico highway at night, tending to stranded motorists, until he becomes obsessed with the origins of a mysterious talking parrot. Nichols is a free-spirited college librarian who, with her basset hound in tow, up-ends his world and opens the mysteries of his orphan childhood -- and the unlikely and intense romance between these two unique characters transforms both them in extraordinary ways.
Shooting begins next month in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Rachel Nichols was recently seen in this summer’s blockbusters “G.I. Joe” and “Star Trek.” Jackson Hurst will next be seen in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn and appears on Lifetime TV’s “Drop Dead Diva.”
“The Loop” features cinematography by Philippe Rousselot, with production design by Mark Alan Duran, and costumes by Joe Aulisi. Casting is by Amanda Mackey and Cathy Sandrich Gelfond.

Nichols is represented by ICM and Management 360. Hurst is repped by Innovative Artists and Lee Peterson and Associates.
Tashtego Films is also gearing up “The Moment When,” James Lapine’s adaptation of his acclaimed off- Broadway play, and is in development with an adaptation of Rosanne Parry’s young-adult novel “Heart of a Shepherd.”

# # #