By Tambay A. Obenson | Shadow and Act
Regner Grasten Film and Game 7 Films have announced the ensemble cast of actors who will star in their fictional account of the night Kitty Genovese was murdered in New York in 1964.
Titled “37” fhe film will follow the lives of a group of families living in the Kew Gardens neighborhood in Queens, NYC, in the 1960s, who failed to react and come to her aid when they witnessed the murder of Genovese.
Genovese was was stabbed to death by Winston Moseley near her home in Kew Gardens, on March 13, 1964. The alleged lack of intervention from her neighbors during the stabbing, became a story. In fact, their unresponsiveness would become a psychological paradigm, prompting an investigation into what was diagnosed as a social psychological phenomenon that has come to be known as the bystander effect or “Genovese syndrome.”
Moseley was arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to death on a few months later. Although his death sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment on the grounds that he had not been allowed to argue during the trial that he was “medically insane.”
Samira Wiley (photo above) of “Orange Is the New Black” fame is part of a cast that also includes Michael Potts, Christina Brucato, Jamie Harrold, Maria Dizzia, Evan Fine, Thomas Kopache, Sophia Lillis, Lucy Martin and Adrian Martinez. No word yet on what roles each of them have signed up to play in the film, which will be directed by Puk Grasten, making her feature directorial debut.
Asger Hussain and Yaron Schwartzman of Game 7 Films will produce, with Regner Grasten and Tove Grasten of Regner Grasten Film executive producing.