Stonestreet Studios to Premiere LEADING STORY At 4th Annual NYC Web-Fest

Stonestreet Studios is sponsoring opening night, November 9th, of the Fourth Annual NYC Web Festival. On top of sponsoring, Stonestreet will WORLD PREMIERE the first episode of their latest web-series, Leading Story, to close out the opening day screenings. The premiere will be followed by a panel with the series creators, Gary O. Bennett and Alyssa Rallo Bennett.

Leading Story stars Maddie Moore, Paula Espinoza, Lexie Orphanos, and features Michael Gwinnett. It focuses on Lori Rift (Moore), a news anchor at odds with her corporate board about a politically charged lede. This premiere is the first episode of a four-part series, which is in production now. "Democracy is not possible without free and robust journalism, the fourth estate. Leading Story is an anthology of characters and scenarios that take place on the front lines of journalistic drama," says Gary O. Bennett the creator and writer of the series. 

The series as a whole is a look into what motivates the stories that are told by our news organizations and, more importantly, that stories that are not. "As a creative team, Gary and I are fascinated and frustrated to the core by the current state of news media. With Leading Story, we hope to show what newscasters are faced with and how, at times, it can be a test of their integrity. It is a fascinating space to inhabit. We hope to thrill, enrage, and inform audiences with a four part series that will do for news what Mr. Robot did for the perception of cyber security," says Alyssa Rallo Bennett, who directed the series. 

Leading Story will premiere alongside various series from all over the world. NYC Web Fest is one of the few festivals that has an International AND Foreign Language category, because they receive so many submissions from around the world. In 2017, over a third of their submissions were outside the US (lead by Canada, Australia, and Argentina respectively). Six months after the first year's launch, the first submission was from SNL's Colin Quinn, whose series "Cop Show" featured Jerry Seinfeld & Amy Schumer. They also hosted the world premiere of "The Mentors" starring comedian Lewis Black. This year the Jury includes the likes of Liz Spaulding, who previously worked at the Tribeca Film Festival and SAG-AFTRA, Ashley C. Ford of Refinery 29, and Sasha Stone of Awards Daily - among others. 

Click here for a clip from The Mentors.

Click here for a clip from Cop Show.

The winner of the 'I LOVE NY' category for 2017 will get to pitch to Above Average, the leading studio and digital publisher of comedic videos, born from Lorne Michaels (SNL) Broadway Video in 2012.

About Stonestreet Studios:

Stonestreet Studios, and independent film studio, is the exclusive screen acting and production partner of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Over their career, the husband-wife team have garnered a reputation for their socially provocative and character-driven content that ranges from television pilots to web series to feature films. The duo have just just finished post production on their latest feature, ReRun, starring Christopher Lloyd and Teo Rapp-Olsson. Their past feature credits include theatrically released films such as Rain Without Thunder (Jeff Daniels, Linda Hunt) and The Pack (Luci Arnaz, Elizabeth Moss).