“Imperial Palace” centers on a Biloxi man who manages a casino that FEMA uses as headquarters for their relief efforts in the area. An ex-girlfriend also arrives on the scene, sparking an uncomfortable love triangle.

Killer Films’ Christine Vachon and Pam Koffler are producing with Quinto Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa. The film will be directed by Victor Quinaz (the upcoming “TWV Project,” also produced by Quinto), and is scheduled to start shooting next spring.

Quinto and Killer Films previously teamed to produce the financial crisis drama “Margin Call,” now in theaters. It stars Quinto, Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons and Demi Moore.

“Christine Vachon is a mentor to us, and we feel very lucky to work with her and Killer on this project,” said Quinto in a press release. “We’re thrilled to take the momentum of ‘Margin Call’ and our experience working with Victor on his first film to move into a second feature with him. He’s a truly original talent, and ‘Imperial Palace’ is a perfect example of his unique, commercial voice.”

Vachon added, “Killer is very excited to be working on this great project. It’s a thrill to be in business with Victor, Zachary and Neal. Quinaz has written the rare kind of film that puts its finger directly on the pulse of today’s America. The country experiences these tragedies, be they man-made or (in this case) levied by nature, which bring out both the best in communities and the worst in our government. ‘Imperial Palace’ is a compelling story about the people who are caught in-between the human response of empathy and the social reaction of bureaucracy in the aftermath of such a tragedy.”

On the acting side, Quinto will reprise his role as Spock in J.J. Abrams’ upcoming “Star Trek” sequel.

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LOS ANGELES: Actor/Producer ZACHARY QUINTO and Producer NEAL DODSON will appearing for a special post-show “MARGIN CALL” Q&A at the 7 PM show at the Century City AMC on Saturday, 10/29. Buy your tickets now before they sell out!

More info on selling tickets will be posted as soon as I get it.

In late 2008, “Margin Call” looked like the kind of film project that could languish indefinitely: an unfinanced script from a first-time writer-director on a wonkish subject — the math behind Wall Street’s recent collapse.

Then Spock beamed in.

Zachary Quinto had just wrapped filming on J.J. Abrams’ reboot of “Star Trek,” playing the pointy-eared young Starfleet Academy commander, and his NBC show “Heroes” had a cult following. He had formed a production company with two drama school friends and was looking for projects, so he met “Margin Call” writer-director J.C. Chandor at the Fairfax Farmers Market on the recommendation of a mutual friend.

“I recognized that I had a window of opportunity that had opened because of my exposure as an actor,” Quinto, 34, said in an interview at the Silver Lake offices of Before the Door, his company with Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa. A bungalow that was once Quinto’s apartment, Before the Door feels as much like a home as a business, with Quinto’s genial mixed Irish wolfhound, Noah, padding through the rooms. “I wanted to take some control of the stories that I’m a part of telling.”

“Margin Call” became Before the Door’s first feature, with Quinto starring as a Wall Street analyst who discovers a catastrophic flaw in his company’s financial formula. Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany and Demi Moore are some of his equivocating bosses, who must determine how to manage the crisis; Penn Badgley is a young colleague out of his depth, mathematically and emotionally. As the film arrives in theaters Friday, Quinto is navigating another, more personal moment in the spotlight, and telling more of his own story: Last weekend he revealed that he’s gay.

On his personal blog, Quinto said that the suicide of gay 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer had motivated him to come forward. “In light of Jamey’s death,” Quinto wrote, “it became clear to me in an instant that living a gay life without publicly acknowledging it is simply not enough to make any significant contribution to the immense work that lies ahead on the road to complete equality.”

If Quinto has found new clarity in his personal life, as a producer and actor he seems more intrigued by ethical gray zones. “Margin Call” tracks a Lehman Bros.-like investment bank over a 24-hour period on the eve of the 2008 financial meltdown, and Chandor, the son of a Merrill Lynch banker, unfurls his story not as an anti-Wall Street polemic but as a kind of economic disaster movie, propelled by a series of morally ambiguous decisions.

“The script required you to invest in the emotional life of these people who have been so blanketly vilified and commonly blamed for what happened in 2008 and what continues to happen today,” Quinto said. “I liked that it didn’t toe a moral line. It doesn’t rake people over the coals, and it doesn’t lionize anybody. The ambiguity of it was the thing that struck the loudest chord.”

Once Quinto attached himself to Chandor’s script, he set about finding actors to join him, beginning with Spacey, whom he knew through friends in the New York theater scene.

“It wasn’t just Zachary’s connections,” said Chandor. “It was the follow-through. We spent months together lobbying agents, meeting with actors. He is a very, very serious guy, and there’s a deep intelligence there combined with this insane fire and energy and motivation that people pick up on and react to.”

Before the Door secured “Margin Call’s” $3.5-million budget from a relative Hollywood newcomer, Seattle real estate scion Michael Benaroya of Benaroya Pictures. Chandor shot the film in 17 days in summer 2010 on an abandoned trading floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, with actors using old offices as dressing rooms — a process that tested Quinto’s multi-tasking abilities as an actor-producer. “To get money, get actors, work out schedules, locations, hire a crew — all of that stuff was so consuming that all of a sudden I was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re actually shooting this movie. I have to focus on my work as an actor.’”

“Zach is such a powerhouse in a gentle way,” Bettany said. “He’s such a go-getter. Things I’ve thought about doing with my life, he’s just got on with it and done it.”

Quinto says his drive is rooted in a traumatic event from his childhood in Pittsburgh. When he was 7, his father — a hairdresser and son of Italian immigrants — died of cancer. “I don’t know that I would have been so self-sufficient and so ambitious if I hadn’t lost him,” Quinto said. “It triggered some sort of survival instinct in me.”

At a high school summer theater program, Quinto met Dodson. They attended Carnegie Mellon University together, along with Moosa. The school ethos infuses Before the Door — the company is named for a CMU drama school exercise, and Quinto estimates that 85% of Before the Door’s future projects involve CMU connections. The company has produced two graphic novels and has several TV and film projects in development and another feature just shot, a $500,000 3-D horror film called “The Banshee Chapter,” directed by CMU alumnus Blair Erickson.

“My best friends are, all of them, people I knew before I was famous,” Quinto said. “That’s hugely important, surrounding myself with the people who hold me accountable to the person I’ve always been.”

Quinto moved to Los Angeles after graduation, quickly securing several TV roles — a code-cracking CIA analyst on “24″ and Tori Spelling’s gay Iranian Muslim best friend on the VH1 sitcom “So NoTORIous.” His breakthrough performance as the villainous Sylar on “Heroes” led to his first major film part, as perhaps the most iconic sci-fi character of all time. Playing Spock capitalized on one of the actor’s chief assets — a breathtaking pair of eyebrows.

Last fall, after shooting “Margin Call,” Quinto made his first New York stage appearance as a man who abandons his AIDS-afflicted lover in an off-Broadway revival of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”

Though he has spoken out on gay rights issues for years, Quinto never publicly acknowledged his own sexuality. “Boundaries and clarity about the difference between my life and my public persona, my work as an actor … is very important to me,” he said in an interview just two weeks ago.

But in a follow-up email this week, he said of his decision to come out: “This decision was made with a tremendous amount of thought and introspection — in my own time, on my own terms and with my own words. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the scores of men and women who have preceded me to this action — both within the industry and in more intimate personal journeys throughout the world. Momentum builds in waves — and I am so grateful to be riding this wave of equality with more openness and integrity than I was ever able to embrace before making this declaration.”

Beginning next week, Quinto will appear in F/X’s “American Horror Story,” in January he’ll begin shooting the “Star Trek” sequel and he’s trying to get another play in the works in New York. A long hoped-for project — as composer George Gershwin — has been put on a back burner by its busy director, Steven Spielberg.

“There was a time when celebrity was associated with people who were actually good at something,” Quinto said, reflecting on Gershwin. “I’m trying to hold on to that, to not believe I need to feed some machine of pop culture or insatiable tabloid journalism in order to prove my value or define myself as an artist.”

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[Please note this panel is NOT being held at the San Diego Convention Center. A Comic-Con badge is NOT required to attend this event, but you MUST purchase a ticket in advance. All ticket sale proceeds go toward Operation Smile.]

At Comic-Con International in San Diego, Zachary Quinto, Before the Door and Archaia Entertainment are supporting Zachary Levi’s (“Chuck”) Nerd HQ “Conversations for a Cause” to benefit Operation Smile, a foundation dedicated to helping children born with cleft palates. For a minimum donation of $20, join Zachary Quinto (Margin Call, Star Trek) and his Before the Door partners Neal Dodson and Corey Moosa for a spirited discussion about their two, new graphic novels published by Archaia: Mr. Murder Is Dead, a “who didn’t do it” mystery set in the fading world of Golden Age comic strips, with writer Victor Quinaz (Chinese Dream) and artist Brent Schoonover (Astronaut Dad); and Lucid, about a combat mage assigned to protect the nation from evil forces, with writer Michael McMillian (True Blood). Moderated by Archaia editor-in-chief Stephen Christy. The panel will be followed by a signing of the Lucid and/or Mr. Murder Is Dead graphic novels ONLY. Jolt’N Joe’s, 379 4th Ave., San Diego, CA 92101. For information on how to buy tickets, visit http://www.thenerdmachine.com/nerd-hq/.

It’s the second time Before The Door has gone with a first-time helmer. That happened on Margin Call, the financial crisis drama which premiered at Sundance and was acquired for distribution by Roadside Attractions for the fall. Quinto, who’ll reprise his role as Spock later this year in Paramount’s Star Trek sequel, previously collaborated with the Periods Films talent on a comedy short film series called Before After. Quinaz and Martemucci also are developing with Quinto a movie version of Mr. Murder Is Dead, which will be published as a graphic novel to be released by Archaia at Comic-Con. Quinto is also producing an unscripted series with Syfy and RelativityREAL starring photographer Tyler Shields

Source: Deadline

Zachary Quinto grows a tiny mustache and gets ready for a bull fight in his latest video for FunnyOrDie.com, Before After! He plays a matador, a priest preparing to perform an exorcism on a possible “bluffer” and a birthday party clown in the brand new short, comprised of three vignettes.

“before. after. all at once. in just a few hours. hurry. olé,” Zachary tweeted late last night.

Before The Door > Short Movies > Before After

Check the picture in bigger size, in our gallery.

The previously announced drama about the financial crisis has now been listed on IMDB as “Margin Call” with release pegged for September 2010.

A ‘margin call’ is a notification from a broker that stock bought with borrowed money is about to dip below a certain value. Zach is listed as cast and producer, alongside his Before the Door partners Corey Moosa and Neal Dodson. Writer and director is listed as J.C. Chandor, who has previously worked in documentary. This will be his first film.

From ZQUK

The show is scheduled to debut next year (10).

Thrilled Paisley says, “I’m very excited to portray the country music world of my favourite town, Nashville, by showing the exciting life of musicians, songwriters and performers – all very talented people.”

Many current country stars will make their acting debuts on the show, according to the Celebrity hitmaker.

Source: Contact Music