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ErinRose Widner& Elisha Yaffe of The Great Indoors

FOR NEW WEB SERIES/TV PILOT, THE GREAT INDOORS

Los Angeles, CA –November 13, 2014 In a world dominated by electronic gaming, the tabletop community is refusing to take a backseat and instead has been steadily gaining momentum. The Great Indoors, an upcoming web series/TV Pilot by co-creators Dean Donofrio & ErinRose Widner delves into this fascinating world of board game enthusiasts, who started out on Monopoly as kids but now have found addictions in Ticket to Ride, Dominion, and Agricola (among others). As the host of his own weekly game night, co-creator Donofrio feels a personal connection to the project, “I’ve been active in the board game community for 10 years – I own over 100 games – and some of my deepest, most meaningful friendships have developed as a result of the game nights I organize. That’s what this series is really about – finding your people and community.”

Donofrio & Widner just launched a Kickstarter campaign for The Great Indoors, and have already felt the support from the Board Game Community. Within the first couple of days of the campaign, game publisher LudiCreations had contributed, and Little Metal Dog lined up an interview with the team for their podcast. Dean smiles, “I’m so excited to work on a project where I’m helping to give my fellow gamers a voice, and also combining it with my passion for storytelling.”

Donofrio has been a working screenwriter, playwright, director, producer and editor for over 15 years. He currently has two feature scripts in development, and was a Nicholl finalist. His work as a writer-director has played throughout Hollywood theatres, including The Blank, Elephant Stages and The Hudson. Over the years he’s had short plays centered around board gamers, but nothing compared to the vision he shares with Widner.

Years before they were popular, Widner co-created/produced and starred in a web series called Deserted which was a parody of the hit-show Lost. Throughout her filmmaking career, she’s also worked on shorts and co-created a feature documentary. So when Widner started looking for her next project she recalled, “I felt like my next step artistically was to create a narrative feature film, but the more Dean and I started talking and writing this project, the more I fell in love with the story and characters we were creating, and realized this was something different than I expected. It’s actually turned into a new hybrid; we’re shooting it in a way that we can cut it as a web series and a TV pilot.”

Casting the project was done carefully by Donofrio and Widner. Widner explains, “We wanted to make sure that every actor we cast reflected the world of The Big Bang Theory, but had the comedic style from The Office.” Ultimately they found a couple of their lead actors in Josh Sussman (Glee, Wizards of Waverly Place) and Elisha Yaffe (The Newsroom, Time Travel Lover).

Rounding out the cast includes Widner (upcoming feature The One I Wrote for You w/Christopher Lloyd), Jonathan Bray (Perception, House of Lies), Nelson Cheng (Jenny Slate’s web series Catherine), Tess Hunt (Tangerine, executive produced by the Duplass Brothers), James Liebman (The Young & the Restless), Rebecca Lumianski (Qwerty), Pritesh Shah (Grimm) & Natalie Palamides (upcoming feature The Kitchen Sink w/Bob Odenkirk).

Donofrio adds, “We’ve had a blast creating some wonderfully awkward moments between these characters who come from such radically different social worlds. It’s fun to watch them find a way to co-exist, all for the sake of pursuing their shared hobby and mine, board games.”

The 1^st season of the series will go into production in January 2015.

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