Kelly Marie Tran set to executive produce spoken-word film Summertime

We’re not about to have that summertime sadness this year, Culturess readers, because Kelly Marie Tran has a spoken-word project that’ll have us snapping our fingers with praise.

The actress who’s blazing a trail as the newest Disney princess is teaming up with Carlos López Estrada, one of the directors and writers of Raya and the Last Dragon, to executive produce his film, Summertime.

In a press release, Estrada expressed his joy concerning Tran’s involvement with the project he is producing alongside Alisa Tager, Diane Luby Lane, Jeffrey Soros, Kimberly Stuckwisch, and Simon Horsman. Estrada said:

"I feel so lucky to have gotten to know Kelly over the last year while working together on Raya. She is not only impossibly talented, but her complete devotion to the project and the community involved in it was invigorating. I am in awe of her as an artist, a person, and an advocate – and am thrilled to know that she will now join our Summertime journey of bringing the poet’s stories to as many people as possible."

Set in LA, Summertime brings together a cast of 25 young adults to create a spoken-word narrative that weaves into an interconnected story. The film is a product of Estrada’s collaboration with the LA-based non-profit, Get Lit, who put on a spoken-word workshop he’d attended.

Kelly Marie Tran fell in love with Summertime‘s spoken-word love letter to LA

The inspiration behind the project stems from the poets involved. In the film, they express their connection to Los Angeles through their words, giving the audience a rundown of the city and their relationship to the people around them and the communities they call home.

Summertime embodies the youth of its cast who are all emerging poets, the majority of whom are making their film debut with this project. Their work in the movie stretches the bounds of creativity combining the precision, elegance, and inelegance of poetry to capture the cast’s lived experiences.

According to the press release, the young poets in the film “radiate vitality, honesty, and profound emotion, and through their art, collectively represent hope,” so it’s no wonder Tran signed onto the project. She recently took to Instagram to speak about her excitement for the movie.

As she said in the press release:

"Watching Summertime was like falling in love for the first time. It’s a love letter to Los Angeles and to the many incredible artists and individuals living in it. I can’t wait for audiences to fall in love with these incredible poets — fully, completely, and inexplicably — the way I did."

It’s a love that has bloomed not only into Kelly Marie Tran’s involvement with the project but also a connection to the Get Lit workshop. According to Scott Donley, CEO and Founder of Good Deed Entertainment, Tran will be attending a session herself to learn how to write her own poetry.

Summertime is set to inspire more viewers soon. While the film made its world premiere at Sundance in 2020, it will now be making its theatrical debut in LA and NY on July 9, 2021 before a planned theatrical expansion starting July 16, 2021.

Watch the trailer below:

The official synopsis from Good Deed Entertainment is as follows:

"Over the course of a hot summer day in Los Angeles, the lives of 25 young Angelenos intersect. A skating guitarist, a tagger, two wannabe rappers, an exasperated fast-food worker, a limo driver—they all weave in and out of each other’s stories. Through poetry they express life, love, heartache, family, home, and fear. One of them just wants to find someplace that still serves good cheeseburgers."