Former state Rep. Joe Wilkinson may have retired from the legislature last year, but he has remained involved in one of the state’s fastest growing and most high profile industries.
Wilkinson’s Fun Academy Motion Pictures last week released its first feature film – Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero, an animated movie about a real life dog that became the mascot for the U.S. Army’s 102nd Infantry Regiment in World War I.
As Baker Owens wrote earlier this week, the film is one of the first to actually be produced and distributed in the Peach State, despite the enormous amount of filming done here.
The film, made for an estimated $25 million, has already received strong reviews from critics with an 85% ‘fresh’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. For Wilkinson, the president of Fun Academy and who has a love for both military history and dogs, the idea was a no brainer.
Producer Jordan Beck gave InsiderAdvantage some insight into the film’s origins:
“In 2010, historical filmmaker Richard Lanni began research for a WWI-themed documentary with an eye towards the Great War’s centennial in 2018. This new documentary was to be a follow-up to Richard’s successful World War II series, The American Road to Victory, which is, to date, the most-aired WWII-themed program in American public television history. Joe was an early champion of the series, helping with outreach to schools, libraries and veterans’ organizations around the country.
I first met Richard when he brought the series to the National Infantry Museum in Columbus, GA, where I was in charge of entertainment and special programming for the museum’s giant screen theater. We developed a partnership to produce further educational media projects, including the WWI documentary; it was during his research process that the story of Sgt. Stubby emerged and changed everything.”
To see where you can catch this Georgia-based project: https://www.showtimes.com/movie-times/sgt-stubby-an-american-hero-131180/atlanta-ga/
