EXCLUSIVE: Nicola Peltz Beckham (Lola), Jazzy De Lisser (Too Much), and Mary Stuart Masterson (Fried Green Tomatoes) have commenced production on Pretty Ugly, a dramatic thriller written and directed by multiple DGA Award nominee Erica Dunton (Ted Lasso).
Set in Winnabow, NC, Pretty Ugly follows Raelynn (De Lisser), a young woman obsessed with the seductive world of social media beauty, and her mother (Masterson), who’s equally fixated on grisly true crime podcasts. Their relationship unravels when a provocative make-up influencer (Peltz Beckham) returns to Winnabow from LA and all three women are confronted with not only a murder but also the real meaning of the American Dream.
Dunton called the project “a movie for this moment, a character-driven murder mystery that highlights the depths to which the internet is changing the face of every town in America.”
Michelle Gomez, Andy Buckley, Cullen Moss, Paul Schneider, Edgar de Santiago, and Angela Wong Carbone round out the cast. Will McCance (Netflix’s Apex) and Dunton are producing, with Beckham exec producing for Bunny Films, alongside De Lisser, and Matthew Petersen and Gill Holland as co-producers. Alan Scott Neal handled casting.
Recently making her feature directorial debut with Lola, a coming-of-age drama where she was also the writer and star, Peltz Beckham has also been seen in projects like Welcome to Chippendales, Holidate, Bates Motel, and Transformers: Age of Extinction. She is repped Gersh, Will McCance, and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman.
Boasting credits including Lena Dunham’s Too Much, Top Boy, Vampire Academy, Project Power and Game of Thrones, De Lisser is repped by Revolution Talent.
Known for turns in classics ranging from Fried Green Tomatoes to Benny & Joon, Masterson just boarded the indie drama Rain Reign opposite Paul Rudd. Her other recent credits include Five Nights at Freddy’s and The Senior, which Angel Studios releases in theaters nationwide this fall. She is repped by Paradigm and Untitled Entertainment.
Dunton has directed episodes of numerous prominent contemporary series, including Ted Lasso, The Waterfront, We Were Liars, Outer Banks, and The Summer I Turned Pretty. She earned two DGA Award nominations for her work on Ted Lasso, as well as Sundance’s Best of Next! Audience Award for her 2011 feature to.get.her, which starred De Lisser. She is represented by Rothman Brecher Ehrich Livingston, RAIN, and Myman Greenspan Fox.
