Kunjue Li Joins Esai Morales For ‘Simone’; Cast Set For Mickey Keating’s ‘Offseason’

Dino-Ray Ramos
·3 min read

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Kunjue Li is set to play the titular role in Betty Kaplan’s forthcoming film Simone. Written and directed by Kaplan, Li will star opposite Esai Morales in the mysterious, erotic and haunting love story between a writer/professor at Puerto Rico’s leading University and an aspiring artist from the immigrant Chinese community.

Li can be seen in Alan Yang’s forthcoming drama Tigertail. Inspired by Yang’s family, Tigertail touches on themes of regret, longing, passion, and repression while spanning continents and generations, from 1950’s Taiwan to present-day New York City. The protagonist Grover ventures to the states with a women he doesn’t connect with.

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Li will play young Zhenzhen, a woman in Taiwan who was always quiet, polite, and out of the way. She finds moving to America with Grover a difficult experience until she meets her friend Peijing and begins to consider her own independence and self-worth.

Li’s previous credits include Ripper Street, Peaky Blinders, Berlin, I Love You, The Laundromat and the mini-series One Child.

She is repped by Thomas Richards and Authentic Talent & Literary Management.

Richard Brake (Game Of Thrones), Melora Walters (Magnolia), Joe Swanberg (Easy) and Jocelin Donahue (Doctor Sleep) have been announced as leads of Mickey Keating’s sixth feature film Offseason. Written and directed by Keating, the plot details for Offseason are being kept under wraps but it is described as “a southern gothic horror story set in an isolated island town.”

Production of the film recently wrapped. Offseason is being produced by Eric B. Fleischman and Maurice Fadida. This marks the third collaboration between Keating and Fleischman, who previously worked on Ritual in 2013) which was bought by Lionsgate. They also teamed for Carnage Park in 2016 which premiered at Sundance 2016 and later sold to IFC Midnight.

Executive Producers include DG Guyer, Mickey Gooch, Jr., Jan McAdoo, Victor Shapiro and Raphael Swann. Swanberg and Keating are represented by CAA. Keating is also represented by David Engel of Rockland Entertainment and attorney Jennifer Levy at Behr Abramson. Donahue is repped by Global Artists and The Group Management Brake is repped by KMR Talent and Main Title Entertainment. Walters is repped by Abrams Artists Agency and Aligned Talent Group.

CAA Media Finance arranged financing for the film will and will represent its domestic distribution rights.

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