Dan Mor in Arrowhead
Playing the lead in the sci-fi adventure telemovie Arrowhead, Dan Mor is in Coober Pedy working 12-hour days and battling intense heat, flies, dust and wind and, 12 metres underground, bats.
All that is physically demanding but the Israeli-born actor is relishing the chance to play Kye, a character who embarks on a psychological and emotional journey after his spacecraft crashes on a desert moon.
It’s the feature writing and directing debut of Jesse O’Brien, produced by TV1 in association with US-based Gorilla Pictures. O’Brien wrote the script in 2009 and teamed up with Gorilla Pictures’ Eric Johnson and Eric Machiela, whom he and DoP Samuel Baulch met when they were at film school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 10 years ago.
The plot follows Kye, a military prisoner who is forced to transform his body and soul to survive, accompanied by a computer named Reef. The cast includes Chris Kirby as the head of security on the Arrowhead science vessel, Aleisha Rose Groth as a scientist, Mark Redpath as a disgraced military leader and Shaun Micallef as the voice of Reef.
“It’s a story about redemption, hope and humanity,” Mor told IF from the location in Coober Pedy. TV1 closed at the end of December and the producers are in talks with Universal’s Syfy to pick up the telemovie.
Arrowhead (http://www.arrowheadmovie.com) is Gorilla Pictures’ second feature. Its first, Beautiful Prison, is a horror film shot in Mexico, aimed primarily at the Latino markets.
A diamond merchant who moved to Australia in 2001, Mor made his acting debut as a drug lord in Cedar Boys in 2009. In his TV debut he played the menacing Lebanese crim Danny DK Karam in Screentime’s Underbelly: The Golden Mile, followed by the Israeli series Downtown Precinct, in which he has a recurring role as a detective.
He must have impressed the Screentime producers because he’s cast as Red in four episodes of Fat Tony & Co, starting next Sunday. He describes Red as a colourful monk/Shaman- like character with a strong sense of morals who’s hired to protect Mokbel’s associates in Melbourne after the gangster fled to Greece.
Mor still works in the diamond business but says, “Acting is my big passion.” He plans to move to Los Angeles at the end of the year.