Aviary Studios has announced its live-action thriller The Gallery is now available on Nintendo Switch.
Pitched as “a thrilling combination of hostage thriller and social drama with a dash of world film festival cinema aesthetic,” the story follows an art curator that is held hostage by a portraitist who threatens to detonate a bomb unless their demands are met. That centres upon two interactive narratives, with one set in 1981 (with a female protagonist) and another in 2021 (with a male protagonist).
Filmed over a six-week period in February and March 2021, you will be faced with more than 150 decision points as you work to “navigate a story full of mystery and intrigue.”
Written and directed by Paul Raschid, it will star George Blagden (Versailles and Vikings), Anna Popplewell (The Chronicles of Narnia), Kara Tointon (Mr. Selfridge and Eastenders), Rebecca Root (The Queen’s Gambit), Richard Fleeshman (The Sandman and Coronation Street), Shannon Tarbet (Killing Eve and Love Sarah) and Fehinti Balogun (I May Destroy You).
“Working on The Gallery was one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had as an actor. The entire team felt completely committed to delivering a monster of a project – a 400-page mountain of creativity from the mind of Paul Raschid,” explains George Blagden. “This commitment meant that you felt completely supported as an actor to just play, and be brave and bold with the choices you made. This is what you always aim for as an actor, but rarely do you feel so enabled to do this. Paul and his team made the process of making The Gallery the perfect combination – working on something extremely challenging, whilst always remembering to have fun doing what we do. The whole experience was so rewarding because of it.”
Anna Popplewell adds: I am absolutely in awe of Paul – I don’t really know how he was able to hold so many varying strands of the same story in his head whilst we shot at such breakneck pace. He was incredibly diligent and so well prepared for the shoot. I’m very grateful to him for how open he was to George and my questions and suggestions, and how supportive he was of us on set. He knew exactly what he needed from each day and yet still found space and time to let us try things or discover new notes and beats. The Gallery just felt like such an adventure of a shoot. Each morning I would look at the 21 pages we were meant to film that day with a bunch of stunts and explosions and props and Covid precautions and moving parts and various cast popping in and out of different setups, and think: ‘this is not possible’. And then at the end of the day we would somehow have done it. It was difficult, but there was this amazing sense that the cast and crew were all in it together, and that was really special – the teamwork.”
The Gallery is now available digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch worldwide.
