Coming to a theater – and a street corner near you – a sci-fi, espionage thriller film crew using Clermont and Brooksville as the scene setting.

For five days in February, Root and Branch Films will be firing up the cameras and yelling “Action!”

Don’t look for the stars among the 20 or so crew members to be shining in the daytime, however. They will be working late at night, but you may hear engines roar for the chase scene, says Kyle Marra, writer and executive producer.

The Nearly Forgotten Incident will be a short film, about 30 minutes long.

“It is about a scientist who comes up with something to end world hunger,” Marra says. However, he is approached by other people who want it. “But the people’s motives are unclear.”

The firm’s website describes it as a man “wrestling with whether to trust his creation to the very system that seeks to exploit it.”

“Imagine being [J. Robert] Oppenheimer,” Marra says of the scientist who spearheaded the creation of the atomic bomb. “His goal was to end all wars but he knew that once it was used it would be out there.”

Cast members include Paul Wilson, who appeared in such movies as The Conjuring, The Devil Made Me Do It, Dusterand The Right Stuff. He is also a consulting producer on the film.

Wilson says he met Marra and his collaborators at a film festival and was immediately taken with the concept. “These guys have great vision.”

Wilson, who studied film in college, has always been a big fan of film noir.

“I told them to watch the opening scene of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. They are filming the movie in black and white and at night. I told them they are the second coming of Welles.”

Welles is most famous for the film Citizen Kane.

Marra, 33, grew up in Brooksville. Included in his roots was watching movies like Steven Spielberg’s The Goonies.

“Our goal is to go back to the 1990s,” he says. The first part of the film is set in 1967, but it ends in the 1990s.

The film will be shot in two parts. The first part, 10–15 minutes, will be shot in Clermont. The finale will be filmed later at an airport in Brooksville.

“Clermont is gorgeous. Downtown has an old-time feel to it,” Marra says.

Florida no longer has a state film promotion effort, unlike Georgia, which offers incentives to filmmakers. Marra and his collaborators still wanted to film on home turf. Businesses can open up space, and the towns will produce police and EMS crews for safety.

The company is using crowdfunding to offer supporters a platform to help fund the movie. Donations are tax deductible.

“I really hope they get the funding they need,” Wilson says.

The first part of the film, once it is edited and ready for viewing, will be used to promote the film and help fund the remainder of the movie.

Lake County has been home to moviemaking before. In 2023, Art Ayris, executive pastor of First Baptist Church of Leesburg and CEO of Kingstone Comics, produced the full-length feature film No Vacancy. It was his second movie filmed in Leesburg. The first was The Touch in 2005.

A few episodes of the TV show SeaQuest were filmed at the Lake County courthouse.

In the 1980s, a movie called Honky Tonk Freeway was filmed in Mount Dora, which allowed the film crew to paint parts of the city pink. The movie featured well-known actors like William Devane and even a water-skiing elephant. Unfortunately, the reviews were not great and the movie ended up in the red.

Photos provided by Root and Branch Films