Helen Hunt Gets Coin And Cast For ‘Ride;’ She Stars, Directs, Produces Her Script

EXCLUSIVE: Some two years after she first put the film together, Helen Hunt has locked financing and cast for Ride, her directing followup to her 2007 debut Then She Found Me. Hunt, who’s coming off an Oscar-nominated performance in The Sessions, wrote the film, produces and stars as well. Ride begins production in Los Angeles on August 5, and Hunt stars with Luke Wilson Dexter‘s David Zayas, Mike White, Richard Kind, Leonor Varela, Elizabeth Jayne and Brenton Thwaites.

The latter plays a 20-year old NYU student who moves from New York to California for the summer. He leaves behind his strong-willed magazine editor mother (Hunt) and when she hears he’s chucking school for surfing, she follows him. There, he pursues his dream and she pursues him. Along the way she meets a surf teacher (Wilson) who brings her to life in every way. Both mother and son find their own version of love, sex and an unexpected state of grace in a most unlikely place. Hunt is producing with Lizzie Friedman, Gregg Little’s Sandbar Productions, and Moon Blauner. Matthew Carnahan is exec producer. The production will move to New York in October. CAA and Kevin Iwashina will broker domestic distribution for Ride. As for Hunt, she will next be seen opposite Samantha Morton in the Steven Bernstein-directed Decoding Annie Parker, based on a true story of the discovery of the breast cancer gene.