Jashandeep Singh
The filming of the sequel to the 2017 film ‘The VelociPastor’ is scheduled to begin in New York and New Jersey in September. The comedy horror film follows up the events of the original film as “Doug and Carol travel to the port city of Milan, where they have to solve a series of murders committed by a masked slasher at an Italian Fertility Festival. And Soviet Spies. INTERPOL’s there, too,” says the official logline.
Although the production received a waiver to proceed with the casting for the film, it hasn’t yet garnered an exemption from SAG-AFTRA to move forward with the lensing in New York. Therefore, the filming of the movie can be affected by the ongoing actors’ strike. Due to its diverse locations and well-established infrastructure, the state has also hosted the filming of numerous other films and TV shows, including ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,’ ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,’ ‘The Crowded Room,’ ‘Heartstopper,’ and ‘Only Murders in the Building.’ ‘The VelociPastor 2’ team will also shoot a portion of the film in New Jersey, which has previously served as a filming location for ‘Oppenheimer,’ ‘Insidious: The Red Door,’ ‘John Wick: Chapter 4,’ ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’ ‘’The Walking Dead: Dead City,’ and ‘Succession.’
‘The VelociPastor,’ touted as a ‘microbudget film’ for its $35,000 budget, hit the festival circuit in 2017 before getting released on home video and streaming platforms in 2019. The film stars Gregory James Cohan as Doug Jones and Alyssa Kempinski as Carol and follows “a priest, after losing his parents, who travels to China, where he inherits a mysterious ability that allows him to turn into a dinosaur. At first, horrified by this new power, a prostitute convinces him to use it to fight crime and ninjas.”
The rest of the cast includes Daniel Steere as Father Stewart, Aurelio Voltaire as Altair, Yang Jiechang as Wei Chan, Jesse Turits as Sam the White Ninja, Fernando Pacheco de Castro as Frankie Mermaid, David Sokol as War Buddy Ali, Kathleen Steere as Adeline, Claire Hsu as a Chinese villager, Nicholas M. Garofolo as Hobo, and George Schewnzer as Doug’s dad.
The original film, written and directed by Brendan Steere, went viral due to its 1970s-style exploration of the horror genre and led to the creation of numerous memes and TikTok videos. Steere knew that there was an audience for the film but the director never imagined that, not even in his “wildest dreams,” his film would “reach the heights it has, and from everywhere all at once.”
Jesse Gouldsbury, who co-produced ‘The VelociPastor,’ is at the helm of the sequel. Gouldsbury and Steere wrote the script and they both serve as producers along with Cohan and Kempinski. Cohan and Kempinski are reprising their roles in the sequel, along with the addition of some new cast members. The pre-production on ‘The VelociPastor 2’ began last year when the makers launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $275,000 as the budget for the film. A teaser trailer of the film was also unveiled at the time. Check it out below.
