Worthing chosen as setting for new feature film – and key cast members have been revealed

Worthing Football Club will be used as a set, as well as the seafront, four different houses and a pub.

Award-winning director Gary Grant is working with Crizmo Productions to film Under Influence, featuring actors from his recent film I'm Not You.

Gary's mum lives in Arundel, so he knows Worthing well, and he is excited to be filming on location in a town he is fond of.

Gary said: "We'll be using the seafront, four different houses and a pub for the filming, as well as Worthing Football Club. One scene will be shot in North London, one in Central London, but 95 per cent will be done in Worthing.

"The material is a play that I wrote that has already been on. It was always meant to be a film but I had the option to see it as a play first and it went extremely well.

"It is a cautionary tale about consent, not a traditional version of it. It's more a case of the people surrounding a dramatic event and how they behave and how that helps nobody, especially not the two people in the middle that they are claiming to care about.

"I'm Not You is about a gender crisis and it has a similar moral undertone. They are using the kid in the middle as a kind of trinket of their own opinion.

"Similarly, this has two kids in the middle who are going through it and are destroyed by their own friends and family screaming and shouting, and actually not caring about them at all. They become lost and that is essentially the story."

Under Influence is about multi influences - drink, friends, social media, opinions, family, and so on. Gary says the script running time is 1hr 37m.

He added: "It's an exciting time. I think the story matters and I think it should be enjoyable to watch as a rollercoaster journey, a dramatic tale. We care a great deal about the content of the story and trying to tell stories that matter without having any preaching opinion whatsoever.

"When I go to see a film, I am not going to hear the director's political standing, I want to see a story. The way you can tell how it went is not what people say to you afterwards, it's when you walk around and they don't see you and an hour later, they're still talking about it."

Harry Still from the BBC series Almost Never will be one of the central characters and comedian Tiff Stevenson will be a therapist. Tom Wisdom from the film 300 and Harry Jarvis from Outlander are also signed up.

All four were involved in I'm Not You, which had its premiere at The Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square in June.

Gary said: "We are looking at others we don't know. On the basis of the last film, we have had some really lovely interest from some relatively big names, so there are lots of people under consideration.

"I will be hidden in there somewhere. I feature in all my films. In I'm Not You, I was an incredibly unintelligent father at a parents evening.

"We are going to be looking for talent in Worthing, people who have just graduated from film school and drama school. We are always trying to find those diamonds."

The film will be promoted on Spotlight, the home of casting, and Gary said being involved in the film would be a way for new talent to 'break down the door' to this platform.

Gary is also conducting a film course in Worthing to teach new upcoming actors. Contact [email protected] for more information.