Many Catfish fans were disappointed that co-host Max Joseph was unable to make it to the live Season 3 finale Chatfish after-show last night, although supermodel (and skilled cyber sleuth) filled in quite nicely. Towards the end of the show Max paid a virtual visit via skype and he revealed the amazingly great reason he was unable to make it.
“I am here in beautiful California. I wasn’t able to make it tonight because I am actually — one of my life-long dreams is coming true. I’m going to be directing a feature film that I wrote with a friend here in Los Angeles.” After a much-deserved round of applause from the live audience, a humbled Max added, “Very exciting. It really is a dream come true in a lot of ways, and it’s happening very soon. I wish I could tell you more about it, but you’ll be hearing about it soon enough.”
The “friend” that Max mentions is actress and writer Meaghan Oppenheimer, who had the rare of honor of making the industry’s coveted “Black List” of desirable scripts in 2013 for her movie The Remains. (Click here for her IMDB page with acting and writing credits.)
The film that Max and Meaghan wrote still doesn’t have a title (or at least not one that has been made public), and is being referred to online as “Untitled DJ Project.” According to TheWrap, “The coming-of-age story follows a young DJ as he works on what he hopes is his first hit track.” The film reportedly have five male leads and one female lead.
Back in June TheWrap also reported that one of the male leads could potentially go to one of Hollywood’s sexiest A-listers: Zac Efron! “Hot off the stunning success of Neighbors, Zac Efron is in negotiations to star in Max Joseph’s Untitled DJ Project, which will be produced by Working Title, multiple individuals familiar with the film have told TheWrap.”
There has been no confirmation of Efron signing on since the article was written in June, and his IMDB page lists The Associate as his only upcoming project. But, Max saying “you’ll be hearing about it soon enough” seems to indicate to me that even if they weren’t able to land Efron, they will be making a splash with some other big names!
Hmmmm… Maybe Selita Ebanks standing in for Max won’t just be a one-episode thing?
UPDATE – The two main actors in the film have officially been announced, and they are HAAAWWWWT!!! Click the link for details:
For those unfamiliar with Max’s background, he is of course filmmaker. His resume up until now included mainly shorts — most notably the viral 2013 “Follow the Frog” commercial as well as the 2013 documentary “12 Years of DFA Records: Too Old to be New, Too New to be Classic.”
Here’s Max’s “Follow the Frog” video (featuring narration from Max), which beat all the competition in TED’s coveted Ads Worth Spreading Challenge and has garnered well over 4.6 million views to date:
And here’s another great video that Max made as an introduction to himself for Catfish viewers:
