The Wilding: Cast & Crew Screening

A Filmmaker's Journal

Jun 27, 2025

The Wilding - Two Reality TV contestants become unsuspecting test subjects for an elite group of Billionaires looking to live forever.

On Wednesday, 25th June 2025, I took a train down to Marylebone Station, jumped on the tube to Covent Garden, and attended a cast & crew screening of THE WILDING at the Garden Cinema. This was my first time seeing the horror-cum-satire-cum-survival-adventure-cum-quasi-vampire movie, on which I served as a screenwriter, on the big screen, and it was quite a moment.

I wrote the first draft, based on director Adam Park and Chris Wilson-Smith’s treatment, back in January 2023. It was shot in October 2024. The main shoot, anyway. As with any large project, there were many moments along the way when I thought it would never get made, but Adam had the drive and determination to see it through. Plus, he got the financing, which he pulled in from various places. I believe casting the likes of Richard Brake, Tim Plester, and the up-and-coming Jördis Richter certainly helped get the money in place.

Adam and Chris re-drafted my draft, then I did another draft on top of their draft later in 2023, and from that point, Adam reworked it throughout filming. Such is the way.

The first segment of filming came in November 2023, when I traveled down to Norfolk to shoot the film’s opening. I have a small cameo as an orderly in a scene alongside Richard Brake and my friend and regular collaborator, Laura Rollins. You can read about it HERE. Adam also shot some scenes with Tim and Jördis around that time.

(It’s nice that two of my stock company of regular actors are in The Wilding, because as well as Laura, my man Andre Pierre from Baby on Board also has a role.)

In early 2024, Adam cut together the ten minutes he’d shot, plus a little shizzle reel, and hunted for more funding, and it was during this time that I thought the project might die. There were a few almost yeses and a couple of nos, and then it all went quiet for a long time. Patience is a key factor in filmmaking. If you don’t have patience or simply have the ability to move on and work on something else, then you’re going to have a miserable life.

In the late spring of 2024, just as I was beginning pre-production on The House on Lidderman Street, Adam messaged me to say that the film was back on and that he had an October shoot date. The same month I was to shoot my own film.

I guess films are like buses.

Adam and his cast and crew shot in Wales in early October. I visited the set towards the end of the shoot. You can read about it HERE.

I shot The House on Lidderman Street two weeks later. It was quite a month.

And so, here we are. The summer of 2025, screening a film I had a hand in writing at a cinema in Covent Garden, sitting alongside my pal Andre and the rest of the cast and crew. Most of them anyway.

It always quite something to see words you once put down on a page transformed into image and performance. Shadows and light. Up on a big screen.

I won’t say too much about the film itself, but I am very happy. I think it’s strong. The performances are wonderful (look out for Tegen Short - she’s one to watch), and it looks great. It was such a complex film to edit. I know Adam and his editor(s) have wrestled with it, but he’s pulled off, I reckon. Can’t wait to see what happens when it goes out into the world.

Once the film was finished, everyone chatted in the bar. I had a good chat to Tim Plester about all sorts (touched on the worrying subject of AI), and spoke to producer Paul Williams and Coz Greenop - a director in his own right: he showed us some footage from a film he’s just shot in Vietnam, which looked fantastic.

I had to get the train back to Leamington, so left early, but as I walked back through the neon and bustle of Leicester Square and Piccadilly to catch the Bakerloo Line, I won’t lie, I felt fucking good.

Onwards.

Here are some rushed, blurred snaps from my shit phone -