Details on Whedon Project Emerge

The Internet was rocked yesterday by news of a until-then secret Joss Whedon project.  The project is a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

According to actor Sean Maher, the project was a top-secret twelve day shoot in which the director asked his stars and crew to stay off Twitter and drop any hints about what was in the works.

“I had just come out publicly and was doing a lot of press for [his now-canceled series The Playboy Club] at the time, and I knew I was going to be rehearsing for Joss’ film,” Maher said. “So I specifically asked Joss if I could talk about the movie, and he asked me not to: He had a bigger strategy in mind.”

That strategy clearly included the late-Sunday tweets and reveal of the website, which featured a single photo of a man in what appears to be a lake wearing scuba gear and holding a martini glass positioned under a cast list. The site read, “Bellwether Pictures is proud to announce the completion of principal photography” and said the project is “a film by Joss Whedon based on a play.”

On Monday, a press release added more details about the project, including that it’s the first feature film from Bellwether, a “micro-studio” created by Whedon and Kai Cole for the “production of small, independent narratives for all media, embracing a DIY ethos and newer technologies for, in this particular case, a somewhat older story.”

Meanwhile, the film’s secrecy also was helped thanks to the fact that Maher and the rest of the cast and crew are frequent Whedon collaborators.

“Everybody on the set loved him so much and wanted to be there, so nobody leaked or talked,” he said. “Everyone on this project has the utmost loyalty to him.”

Whedon even cracked jokes whenever he saw one of the cast or crewmembers on their mobile phone: “He’d remind us, ‘Don’t you dare tweet that,'” Maher said.