My Unsucky Third Movie

It made a lot of sense for Emily Hagins to debut the trailer for her new film My Sucky Teen Romance at Wizard World Austin Comic Con. After all, where could be a more perfect location for a film of young love and vampires at a comic convention than, well, a comic convention?

Surrounded by enough of her cast that they were spilling off the stage for her Sunday morning Q&A, Hagins ran through the trailer twice, plus a couple of scenes. What's brewing in the belfry is somewhere between Ginger Snaps and Ghost World: It's your typical girl (Elaine Hurt) meets boy in bad vampire costume (Patrick Delgado) at a scif-fi con, but it turns out he's a real vampire. Hagins explained, "You guys have been to this convention today, and there's so much work that goes in to putting on a real convention. The one I based the script on is huge and takes over a whole hotel, and we had not very much money to make this film. So we had a really fantastic team that helped stage the convention and make it look professional."

Part teen vamp comedy, part-commentary on such films, with some serious gore (this is, after all, the high school director responsible for creating zombie horror Pathogen when she was 12.) Along with her sophomore feature The Retelling, this makes her third horror-tinged film but, Hagins said, "I'm looking to make a comedy next." She added, "As long as there's a good story behind it, I'm cool with any genre. I'm least into romantic comedies, straight-up chick flicks, but aside from that I'm into any genre."

The film, which is due next year, is about two-thirds of the way through the rough cut. Like most indie film makers, Hagins is still looking for a distributor and finishing funds, and you can donate via Indiegogo.com. The $5,500 target doesn't look like a lot, but as Hagins has already explained on her website, she's already cut the budget to a third of her original micro-budget, so every dollar will really count.

It undoubtedly helped the production costs that Hagins has already built her own team of classmate/actors, like Lauren Lee from The Retelling, Santiago Dietche from her 2007 short Party Killer, and Tony Vespe from Pathogen (ask him about his Mick Jagger.) There're also a few new faces in the mix, like Devin Bonnée as Vince, the too cool-for-school biker who will get Team Edward all giddy. "Everyone to me, when I auditioned them, they all just felt real to me. They don't feel like those 25-year-old kids on Gossip Girl," Hagins said. "No offense to Gossip Girl."