#Oscar Winner Brian Helgeland on 30-Year Journey to Make ‘Finestkind,’ Most Personal Film of His Career

Hollywood is overflowing with stories about films that took years of blood, sweat and tears to bring to the screen. Brian Helgeland’s Finestkind represents one of the longest kinds.

The Oscar-winning screenwriter of Mystic River and veteran director of such films as Legend, 42, A Knight’s Tale and Payback finished the script when he was 28. He’s now 62. “The joke is that I wrote it before Toby Wallace and Jenna Ortega were born and Ben Foster was 10 years old. It’s very strange, but everything happens for a reason. I just had to wait for this whole cast to grow up so I could cast them,” he explained at the film’s West Hollywood premiere on Tuesday referring to his actors who star opposite Tommy Lee Jones, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Aaron Stanford, Scotty Tovar, Tim Daly, Lolita Davidovich and Clayne Crawford. 

Finestkind, which hits Paramount+ on Dec. 15, tells the story of two brothers (Foster and Wallace) who are reunited as adults over a fateful summer while working in the world of commercial fishing. After veering too far into Canadian territory and having their boat impounded by local authorities, the brothers are forced to strike a deal with a violent Boston crime gang while a young woman (Ortega) finds herself caught in the middle.

The film — produced by Gary Foster and Russ Krasnoff of Krasnoff/Foster Entertainment, Taylor Sheridan of Bosque Ranch and David C. Glasser of 101 Studios in association with MTV Entertainment Studios — is set and was shot in Helgeland’s hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts, with some scenes taking place on a boat that belonged to family friends of Helgeland. Needless to say, it’s the most personal film he’s ever made.

“The characters are commercial fishermen. My dad was a commercial fisherman and so was my grandfather and I fished when I got out of college,” he explained. “It was very surreal, almost like making a documentary.”

He also described it like pushing a boulder up a hill for many years due to the challenges in getting it across the finish line. After working with Heath Ledger on back-to-back films A Knight’s Tale and The Order, the two made a pact that Helgeland would wait for Ledger to star in the film once he was the right age for the lead role. Ledger passed away before that happened. Then, a few years back, Finestkind looked ready to roll with Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya and Ansel Elgort on board to star.

“That package fell apart for various reasons,” explained Gary Foster on Tuesday night’s red carpet. “To be honest, it was very depressing. I thought we had it there, and [when it fell apart] we just kind of figured it might be done for good at that point. However, Brian called me one day and said, ‘I really need to do this.’ He didn’t give me any reasons but I just had a sense. I told him, ‘If you’re 100 percent in, I will kill to get this one but you can’t back out.’ And so we did it together.”

The fact that it got made gave the pair, and their many close collaborators, their own Hollywood ending, and it’s clear by speaking to both of them that it’s an experience they won’t forget.

“I’ve made a bunch of films and they’ve been some good experiences,” said Gary Foster, who has produced everything from Sleepless in Seattle and Daredevil to the TV series Community. “This was the closest group of people I’ve ever worked with. Part of it is due to Brian because we knew how much this meant to him but another part was the fact that we were all living in a Residence Inn by Marriott in Braintree, Massachusetts. There wasn’t a lot around there so we spent many a night by the fire outside or in the parking lot. We just wanted to be with each other. It was very hard to walk away from this one and there were a lot of tears when we wrapped. It was a very special time in our lives.”