VIRAL NEWS

Michelle Rodriguez's Citizen Jane: An Early Viral for Blacktino?

by Alex Billington
September 27, 2010
Source: SlashFilm

Okay, what the hell is this? Yes, that's Michelle Rodriguez sporting a rocket launcher in a promo shot for an action "remake" of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane called Citizen Jane. At the infamous Fantastic Debates last night, they handed out posters to everyone coming in (to see Rodriguez box Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League) for Citizen Jane. The posters include a "release date" of 09-05-2011, Rodriguez and that's it. But we've never heard of this film before and it's not listed on IMDb. So what the heck is it? Well, SlashFilm seems to have discovered that it's for an upcoming indie flick called Blacktino that's premiering at SXSW.

Not only is there a poster for Citizen Jane movie, but there's a crazy teaser for it as well (from the official website) which you can watch at the bottom. It's all Fantastic Fest themed but it doesn't seem to actually involve Fantastic Fest. SlashFilm did some snooping and figured out that the release date listed is actually the 70th Anniversary of the opening of Citizen Kane, which doesn't mean much. They also figured out that this is all connected with a filmmaker named Aaron Burns who happens to work for Robert Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios and is making his feature debut on a 2011 film called Blacktino. Here's the synopsis:

"Blacktino" is a dark teen comedy about an overweight half-black, half-hispanic nerd named Stefan Daily. He was raised by his black grandmother in a medium sized suburb of Austin, TX. Struggling to find his place in a mostly white high school, Stefan finds sanctuary among the eclectic mix of social outcasts in the school's Theatre Department.

So there's no "overweight half-black, half-hispanic nerd" in this that we've seen, but that theater department bit at the end reminds me a lot of Hamlet 2 (a great movie if you haven't seen it), and I immediately realized that's where this Citizen Jane will probably come into play, in some wacky ways. Apparently there's even an announcement on the Blacktino Facebook page stating that Michelle Rodriguez had joined the cast. That's a bingo! So this was all a sneaky little viral to get people interested in Blacktino even though we have no clue how Citizen Jane actually plays into the film. Okay, I'll bite, but I hope the pay off is all worth it in the end!

Until we see/hear more about either Blacktino or Citizen Jane, you might as well watch the teaser below and let us know if you've heard anything about the movie either. The Citizen Jane footage was originally debuted by Film School Rejects. You can also read the SlashFilm write up about this mini viral for more information and context. I'm now curious, they've got me hooked, but let's get an actual trailer next. So who else is in?

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