August 1, 2022
Sherlock Holmes: Gentleman eccentric, consulting detective, and now … finger puppet?!
The twenty-year comedy short veterans at Haptance Films are pleased to announce their new company label and most ambitious project yet: FOGTOWN, a TV series and interactive video game seeking crowdfunding on Seed&Spark. The debut episode of this original tongue-in-cheek homage to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective is just the start of a planned season of rip-roaring adventures full of mystery, humor and heart, all set in a felt-and-cardboard world populated by eclectic square-headed puppets.
On August 1st, Hapstance is launching a $49,000 crowdfunding campaign to finance production of a FOGTOWN television pilot and companion game. The campaign will run for a full month on Seed&Spark, a popular film and storytelling fundraising platform with an 80% success rate in supporting creative projects.
Get a first glimpse of the project in the announcement video below.
Interviews are welcome and available upon request. If interested, please reply to fogtownseries@gmail.com
Watch announcement trailer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0wAHQujB68
About FOGTOWN
- stars the brilliant but easily distracted Sherblock, whose genius is rivaled only by his short attention span and zeal for exciting new challenges. Not just any old case is good enough for Sherblock: only the zaniest and most improbable crimes are worthy of his unparalleled intellect. Along for the ride is his faithful friend Blockson, with support (of a kind) from the misunderstood Chief Inspector LeFraude (Rizwan Manji, Schitt’s Creek, Peacemaker), the secretly-thrill-seeking landlady Mrs. Hud (Tricia Brioux, voice of the titular character in Robert Eggers’ The Witch), and many others performed by an acclaimed cast of actors with credits in TV, film and games.
Two FOGTOWN projects are in the early stages of development:
TV Pilot: The half-hour pilot episode sees Sherblock and Blockson joining forces to foil the mysterious Moth Napper (voiced by Stephen Russell of Thief, Skyrim and Dishonored 2 fame). Or whatever other absurd diversions arouse Sherblock’s interest instead. It will be made using a blend of old-school puppeteering and the same sort of virtual production technique used for The Mandalorian, with characters filmed in front of monitors displaying the finished environments. The completed episode will be used as a proof-of-concept pitch to television studios for further production of a full series.
Video Game: As an incentive for crowdfunding backers (and released in late 2023 to the general public on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux), a short but highly replayable choice-driven interactive companion tale is being developed with its own wacky standalone mystery to solve. Players decide which branching paths to take, featuring special guest stars Dean Erickson (Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within), Lenval Brown (narrator of Disco Elysium), Paul Morgan Stetler (Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh) and Rupert Booth (Contradiction, The Shapeshifting Detective).
Media contact: fogtownseries@gmail.com
Assets and Links
- Seed&Spark crowdfunding campaign
- Official website
- YouTube (to be updated regularly during the campaign)
- Steam
About Fogtown LLC
Fogtown is a collection of passionate lifelong filmmakers and gamers from across the United States and Canada. For more than twenty years, the team has created comedy shorts and features both individually and collectively, with over fifty completed releases including I Need His Blood for My Poisons, Word on the Street, IKEELYA and Coup de Cinema. Fogtown will be their first full-fledged television series.
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