Charlie Matthau Developing T.D. Rizor’s ‘Freaky Deaky High’ Book Series For TV

Anthony D'Alessandro

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EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Charlie Matthau has already submerged himself in another type of Freaky Deaky world, specifically his 2012 feature adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel. Well, Matthau is headed back to another type of Freaky Deaky sphere, specifically author T.D. Riznor’s Freaky Deaky High from Wishing Well Press.

While completed unrelated to Leonard’s novel which dealt with a pair of ’60s bomb-making radicals turned capitalists, Freaky Deaky High is set in the fly-over state middle-class town of Bedford. Each books deals with a different student, at the same high school, Franklin Delano High, and the paranormal occurrences in their life. Matthau acquired all of Riznor’s novels in the Freaky Deaky series —Killer Ride, Student Boy, Photo Bomb and the upcoming to be published The Locker. The plan is to mount a TV series of which Riznor has already finished the pilot script based on Killer Ride. The project is being billed as a Black Mirror but set at the same high school, with each episode in regards to its protag running the social gamut of freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, rich kid, poor kid, model, cast-out, tech-head and more. Episodes won’t end with “guy gets girl”. If that happens, the girl is not of this world, possibly dead, and the guy is living a simulation.

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Episode One, Killer Ride, follows a teenage girl whose Tesla-like car, which can drive itself, falls in love with her. The car gets possessive, drives 200 mph and complicates her love life.

Riznor’s upcoming Locker follows a jealous boyfriend who locks his girlfriend’s math tutor in a locker after he tries to kiss her. Later when they open the locker, the body is missing.

Matthau is currently in post on his latest directorial The Book of Leah starring Armand Assante. He is also producing the German Feature film Dylan Papermoon which is currently filming in Bamberg Germany, and the TV series 1920, The Year of the Six Presidents, based on the book by David Pietrusza and Mexican High, based on the novel by Lisa Monroy. Matthau is also directing and co-writing a World War Two thriller called Bodyguard of Lies with Denise O’Dell (The Promise), and a feature based on the the novel Huge by James Feurst.

Matthau is also producing The Invitation and The Sugar Shack with Judd Rubin and overseeing a young adult publishing label with former Dimension Films executive Michael Zoumas. They will publish four books in 2020 with an eye toward turning them into TV Series. Matthau is repped by Zero Gravity.

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