‘Parallel’ Screenwriter Jonathan Keasey’s MindRiot Entertainment To Open Ireland Office

EXCLUSIVE: US-based MindRiot Entertainment, co-producer of the forthcoming Parallel starring Danielle Deadwyler (Till), Aldis Hodge (Black Adam), and Edwin Hodge (The Tomorrow War), is crossing the pond to open an office branch in Ireland.

The outpost will be headed by screenwriter, director, and playwright Justin MacGregor, who will work alongside company founder Jonathan Keasey (Gamergate, Rollover). The company already has a series of projects on its slate, including Parallel, penned by Keasey, and the feature film Down Wind, which Keasey is writing with Jayro Bustamente (La Llornoa) attached to direct. MindRiot is also prepping the pic Tow, a film based on the true story of a mother and daughter combatting Seattle’s housing crisis. The pic is financed and packaged, but production is on hold due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

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Raised in the U.K. and Vancouver, MacGregor is a filmmaker, playwright, and theatre director. His first feature, The Vigil, chronicled a road trip from Canada to Seattle to attend Kurt Cobain’s funeral, and was distributed globally by Vanguard International and broadcast on The Sundance Channel and The Movie Network. Alongside his professional practice, MacGregor is Head of Film at Trinity College Dublin.

MacGregor most recently attended the Dublin International Film Festival with the doc Is There Anybody Out There; Young Voices from Inside the Pandemic. He is currently working on a doc titled When Havel Met Lear (and Beckett Too), which he developed while he was the Writer in Residence for Prague’s UNESCO City of Literature and with the support of the Vaclav Havel Library. He is also a regular contributor on Ireland’s national radio with RTE’s arts show, Arena.

MindRiot’s staff also includes new COO Randa Minkarah. She is the former head of Business Development at North America’s Fisher Communications, where she led sales teams for ABC, Fox, and Univision.

The company is also engaged in a series of TV projects. The company is developing a TV series with Hodge Brothers Productions called Roughstock about Black bull riders, which is temporarily on hold due to North America’s strikes. The company is also developing the series Druid Rising alongside producers Newgrange Pictures (Ireland) and Yellow Film and Television (Finland).

“I couldn’t be more excited to reel in Justin,” said Keasey.

MacGregor added: “It is a thrill to join MindRiot from Dublin. I may not live in the Pacific Northwest now, but being there for so many years, working and collaborating with so many talented filmmakers, shaped my filmmaking and sensibilities in so many ways.”

Keasey is repped by Circle of Confusion, and David Matloff, Jake Shapira, and Adam Vitale of Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum Matlof + Fishman. He is also a part-time professor at Seattle University.

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