LAVALLETTE – “The Kill Room,” a movie partially made in Ocean County, will be in theaters this fall.
Uma Thurman and Joe Manganiello filmed the final scenes at the Jersey shore on October 7, 2022. It reunites Thurman with her “Pulp Fiction” co-star Samuel L. Jackson and features her daughter, Maya Hawke. The release date is September 29, 2023. It’s rated R.
Manganiello is a contract killer and Jackson is his handler. When someone needs Manganiello to kill someone, the money is laundered through Thurman’s art gallery. In order to make the scheme work, Manganiello also makes a work of art to be sold.
The killer is not an artist, so his work is just thrown together. But people pay millions of dollars for bizarre, abstract art, so the scam is believable. However, the murderer becomes an overnight sensation in the art world, which threatens to expose their plot.
The last few shots of the film needed to be done in Florida last summer but the weather didn’t work out.
In September, cast and crew came to Lavallette to finish the movie. They blocked off entrances to a park off Bay Boulevard for some filming, bringing in palm trees to complete the look.
They set up shop in the West Point Island home of James and Sharon Maida. Make-up and hair were done in the house. Thurman had her studio in a spare bedroom. Manganiello and his dog, Bubbles, worked out of a side room leading to the deck.
The garage became a location where Manganiello opens up a roll of caution tape and interacts with a dead body. A local limo service brought in a white limo for a shot of Thurman going into it.
The Maida’s boat, License To Chill, will also make it into the movie. There’s a chance that the Seaside bridge, off in the distance, will stand in for the bridge on the Florida Keys.
They also filmed in Jersey City, Hoboken, New York and Florida.
The recently dropped trailer shows city streets that could be Hoboken. At one point, Jackson’s computer screen has the Neptune Bakery logo, which could be the Jersey City shop.
The director, Nicol Paone, grew up in Lyndhurst, although she moved to L.A. Her proud parents, Dominick and Elizabeth, live in the Green Island section of Toms River.
James Enright, a chiropractor in Lavallette, graduated with Nicol Paone. James Maida is his client.
When Paone needed a waterfront location, she said “I know just the place – the Jersey shore.”
“My chiropractor, Jim Enright, asked my dad ‘who do we know?’” Then Jim Enright asked James Maida to borrow their house. “That’s Jersey for you,” she said.
Back in September, Paone took the time to sit down with a reporter about working locally.
“I love it,” she said. “It feels like full circle.”
The writer and comedian made her directorial feature debut with Friendsgiving (2020), which she also wrote.
Sharon Maida said they live in Bucks County, but summer here. In a strange coincidence, their son Nick was having dinner with his fiance in Hoboken when Paone was filming in that restaurant.
Producer William Rosenfeld took a brief step in front of the camera to portray the body on the floor of the Maidas’ garage.
Nicol knew one of his business partners from her Wall Street days. He sent Rosenfeld the script.
He grew up in Philadelphia but his family summered in Barnegat Light since the early 1980s. Even now, he’ll take his kids down there.
When they were driving south on the Garden State Parkway from New York to Lavallette, they got off at the Toms River exit, but a little piece of him longed to go down to the LBI exit.
“It’s a little dream,” he said, “to be able to come back to childhood places, with people you love – it doesn’t feel like work.”
When he was a kid, he dreamed of making movies. So, everything he saw was a potential location. Now, to actually make a movie at the Jersey shore is amazing.
Manganiello joked with the locals and the crew during breaks. He told The Toms River Times how he and his chihuahua mix enjoyed his time at the shore.
“I’m from Pittsburgh. My parents are from Boston. I’ve got a bit of that East Coast edge. When the cameras are off, and they’re barbecuing with the Jersey Teamsters, I feel right at home,” he said.
North American distribution is being handled by Shout Factory, which won a bidding war for the movie at the Cannes Film Festival, according to industry publications.
The trailer can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=Kk89vbx_k3w
