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Indie filmmaker James Ward Byrkit, the acclaimed writer-director of low-budget 2014 film Coherence, has found his next project in the dramatic thriller DO THEY KNOW IT’S MURDER, the Tracking Board has exclusively learned.

The film is set during the recording of the 1984 song “Do They Know It’s Christmas” as songwriter Bob Geldof discovers a dead body and must find out who killed the star without derailing the song.

The Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Eric Robinson will produce with Laura Tunstall and Mette-Marie Kongsved of Nowhere Films. The project is not set up at the moment, but it is starting to gain traction with indie film financiers, according to sources.

Byrkit’s first full-length feature, Coherence, won Best Screenplay at Fantastic Fest and the Sitges International Film Festival, and the film also earned him a Gotham Award nomination for Breakout Director of the Year. It quickly thrust him into the arthouse spotlight, and there are many people in the indie film community who have been eagerly awaiting his next project.

Byrkit is represented by WME and the Gotham Group.

Jeff Sneider | Editor in Chief