A FILMMAKER will have his revenge thriller screened in Times Square after working on the blockbuster Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.

Former Lymm High School pupil Chris Gainsbury will be jetting off to New York for the Urban Action Showcase international film festival which takes place on November 12.

The 26-year-old will be screening his self-funded action movie, Corruption II, which he has been co-producing alongside fellow University of Salford graduate, Shaun Cooper.

Chris directed the film upon graduating from his professional sound and video technology degree in 2014.

He said: “We’re competing against other films that have been similarly made with no budget so who knows what will happen. It’s exciting to think we’re screening the film in Times Square of all places and we could end up taking home an award.

“HBO are affiliated with the festival so there will be some TV execs and usually there are some high profile actors in attendance. So it is a great opportunity to network with people from the industry.”

The 83-minute film tells the story of an ex-intelligence agent, who is forced back into his former lifestyle of violence, when a criminal mastermind sends a vicious gang on the hunt for revenge.

Chris added: “It’s very much a revenge based thriller so we took a lot of inspiration from films like Taken when we were writing it.

“But once we’d completed it we took a lot of reference from a film called Gone Girl, especially for colour grading and for its soundtrack.”

Chris, Shaun and a third graduate, Paul Handforth, spent five months writing the 89-page screenplay in 2013. Then there was a four month shoot in Manchester during the summer of 2014. Chris then spent hundreds of hours editing the film in post production.

Corruption II stars Michael L. Knight with Appleton’s Thom Gallagher among the supporting cast.

Chris said: “It was very enjoyable because producing is something I can see myself doing in the future, potentially as a career.

"But it got crazy at times. We had to juggle the availability of people and locations due to the unpaid collaborative nature of the film.

“It was funded solely by myself and Shaun alongside various contributions including locations, props and camera equipment.

“We even went as far as having a car dealership provide us with our action vehicle. We were given an Audi for a couple of weeks to film with and that ended up being our lead character’s car.

“But our actor Michael had only just passed his driving test a couple of days before we got hold of the Audi.

“So the owner of the dealership sat in the back of the car to make sure nothing went wrong and in the faster shots he even sat in as a ‘stunt driver’.”

The part of the film that Chris is most proud of is a scene on the top floor of an 11-storey car park at MediaCity.

He added: “It was a stand-off between the lead character Michael and some vicious henchmen. The best thing about this scene is that the camera views spanned right across the city skyline of Manchester so it made for some really nice cinematography.”

Corruption II was completed around a year ago before entering its film festival run throughout 2016. The international award nomination came in for Urban Action's Blood, Sweat and Bones category for films made with no budget.

But Chris has certainly been keeping busy since. He worked on Paul Abbott’s comedy drama No Offence and was on set coordinating extras when production for the J.K. Rowling blockbuster Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them came to Liverpool.

Chris said: “It’s a multi-million pound production so the size and scale of it was incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it in terms of the amount of people involved and the cost of the equipment.”