Director Alexander J. Farrell recently shared how his upcoming Amazon film, How To Date Billy Walsh, came to life.
In an interview with CeneMagazine, Farrell shared, “Greer (Farrell’s writing partner) and I spent two weeks on a couch in Northern Ireland watching every single teen flick ever written to try to find a new, unique way to tell this story.”
“It’s about two best friends. And Archie has been in love with Amelia since he first laid eyes on her and the day he plans on telling her it’s the first day of the last term at school. But his plans are interrupted by a really cool, really good-looking American exchange student. It’s a beautiful story about childhood love and having the balls to say it when you need to say it!”
Although the script didn’t draw directly from personal experiences, Alexander had a gut feeling that the call from Amazon was on the horizon.
“I guess sometimes, you know, when you’re writing a script, there’s magic,” he shared. “It’s just in the air. It’s on the paper. It’s in the room. It’s in the ideas. It’s in the paint you’re throwing and we just knew this one was special. It was really quick between conceptualising it and it being greenlit. I just remember opening the door and screaming when we got the call.”
Alexander added, “It’s gonna be the first time we’ve really seen something that we’ve written on such a scale. You know, the characters that you love, and that lived in your head for so long only on paper, are now going to stare back at us from screen in real life. It’s surreal.”
Featuring a star-studded ensemble, including Sebastian Croft, Charithra Chandran, Lucy Punch, Tim Downie, Nick Frost, and Tanner Buchannan from Cobra Kai, How To Date Billy Walsh is poised to be an international 2024 sensation, reaching audiences in over 240 countries.