{"id":220768,"date":"2026-04-06T17:01:48","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/220768\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T17:01:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:01:48","slug":"don-cesar-taking-leading-role-on-silver-screen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/220768\/","title":{"rendered":"Don CeSar taking leading role on silver screen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. \u2014 The legendary Don CeSar in St. Pete Beach will soon have a leading role on the silver screen.<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p>The movie is based on the book \u201cLosing Earth\u201d by Nathaniel Rich and stars Paul Rudd, Evan Peters, Amy Ryan, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Tatiana Maslany\u00a0and Jason Clarke<br \/>\n<br \/>Extras and production crews are being recruited locally to work on the project<br \/>\n<br \/>The film could be released by the end of the year<\/p>\n<p>Academy Award winner Tom McCarthy is directing the film, titled The Statement, on location at the Pinellas County landmark.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 1980, a bunch of government officials, climate scientists and activists came together with the sole purpose of talking about climate change and to try and come out with a unified statement,\u201d said Jonathan Schwartz, one of the producers of The Statement.<\/p>\n<p>The movie is based on the book \u201cLosing Earth\u201d by Nathaniel Rich and stars Paul Rudd, Evan Peters, Amy Ryan, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Tatiana Maslany\u00a0and Jason Clarke.<\/p>\n<p>Extras and production crews are being recruited locally to work on the project.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m an actress in the area and I&#8217;ve worked on commercials in the background before, but I&#8217;ve never done film, so I&#8217;m really excited for this opportunity,\u201d said Paula Espinosa, who was styled and fitted for her role as an extra in the film that starts shooting Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Producers say deciding to film at the Don CeSar was easy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCreatively, it had to be here, this is the place the real conference took place,\u201d said Schwartz, who is excited to bring the production to Pinellas County.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0403_bn9_don_cesar_movie_2.jpeg\" alt=\"Locally recruited extras will be styled in 1980\u2019s era costumes. (Spectrum News\/Melissa Eichman)\" class=\"hashed-image image\" img-data-alignment=\"center\" img-data-width=\"percent-hundred\" loading=\"lazy\" img-data-caption=\"Locally recruited extras will be styled in 1980\u2019s era costumes. (Spectrum News\/Melissa Eichman)\" img-data-wrap-text=\"true\" img-data-editing=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Locally recruited extras will be styled in 1980\u2019s era costumes. (Spectrum News\/Melissa Eichman)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.visitstpeteclearwater.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Visit St. Pete-Clearwater<\/a> says filming locally is huge for the film industry and community impact both short and long-term.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn a large-scale production like this, they&#8217;ve got the whole crew in town. They&#8217;re staying in hotels in and around the area. They&#8217;re here for an extended period of time. And so there&#8217;s a lot of direct economic impact from that,\u201d said Dave Caputo, Film Commissioner with Visit St. Pete-Clearwater.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn a worldwide stage, you&#8217;re going to have a film that&#8217;s featuring our destination, and I think that&#8217;s going to be really important,&#8221; said Caputo. &#8220;And you know, film tourism is a real thing, people see things on screen and they say, wow, where is that? I&#8217;d really like to go there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, Espinosa prepares to go to the 80\u2019s for her big screen debut.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m ready, I\u2019m ready,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The film could be released by the end of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. \u2014 The legendary Don CeSar in St. Pete Beach will soon have a leading&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1595,274,104,1187,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-220768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-app-arts-entertainment","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-melissa-eichman","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pinellas-county","14":"tag-st-pete","15":"tag-st-pete-headlines","16":"tag-st-pete-news","17":"tag-st-petersburg","18":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","19":"tag-st-petersburg-news","20":"tag-tampa","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}