EXCLUSIVE: Aly Michalka and AJ Michalka have wrapped on an untitled indie dramedy for first-time feature writer-director Stephen Pierce Ringer. The musician-actress siblings known as Aly & AJ, who perform together as the musical duo 78violet, produced and starred in the film as two sisters on the cusp of adulthood spending their last week in their LA hometown before embarking on their next tour.
The Michalkas drew on their own experiences as Billboard-charting touring musicians for the non-autobiographical, fictional story. They should have plenty of material: The pair released the first of three studio album in 2005 and co-starred in Disney telefilm Cow Belles and MTV’s Super Sweet 16: The Movie before building their own respective acting careers in TV and film. Aly appeared on Phil Of The Future, Hellcats, and in films Bandslam and Easy A and last year joined the cast of Two And A Half Men. AJ’s credits include The Lovely Bones, Secretariat, and ABC’s The Goldbergs. They produced the film along with Ringer and Kerry Barden through Violet House Productions.
Mimi Rogers also toplines the cast, which includes Gil Bellows, Dan Byrd, Liam Aiken, Amanda Crew, Tyler Labine, Madeline Zima, Erin Cummings, Ryan Donowho, Gale Harold, and Jon Heder.
“AJ and I have always wanted to create a project that we could be involved in from the very start from the script development stage, to the financing, to the casting process,” said Aly Michalka. “We wanted to utilize our own lives as entertainers as the jumping off point for a fictional story. So we took our vision to our director to bring our idea to life. This was a movie to be made together as young women, not as children like we had in the past.” Said AJ Michalka: “The best part of this project was being able to work with the one person that knows you better than anyone else. We pushed each other to share parts of ourselves that no one has ever seen on screen before. We were very transparent about our insecurities and our failures.”
Aly and AJ Michalka are repped by Gersh, Evolution Entertainment, and McKuin, Frankel, and Whitehead.
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