WHEATLAND – The town of Wheatland and fans who have been following Quaid Cundall’s three-movie trilogy are anticipating the third and final movie which will premiere this month.

According to Cundall, this is the part that will tie a lot of things together and answer some unanswered questions from parts one and two.
The second movie which premiered Jan. 25 raised money for Platte County Early Literacy Project with Susan Bednasek.  The first movie had been premiered with all proceeds going to benefit Project Safe, Inc last fall.

The final film in Quaid Cundall’s Spectacular Spider-Man trilogy is set to show exclusively at Cinema West, downtown Wheatland March 14, at 6 p.m. Donation admission and all proceeds for this third movie in the trilogy are in honor of his beloved friend Dallin Gunter and to help support the Jason's Friends Foundation, assisting Wyoming families whose children suffer from childhood cancers.

There will also be a raffle for a gift basket supplied by Simply Creative filled with snacks, gift card, and a very special commemorative mug and tee shirt dedicated to the memory of Dallin and celebrating the locally produced films. Purchase tickets from now till showtime at Cinema West - 1 for $1 or 6 for $5. Proceeds will go to Jason’s Friends Foundation. 

“When a child is diagnosed with cancer or brain/spinal cord tumors, the family’s world is turned upside down,” Molly Cundall said. “The mission of JFF is to spare the family the threat of a financial crisis arising in the midst of their medical emergency, providing financial support where possible and focusing on each family’s individual situation including travel expenses: fuel, lodging, meals, groceries, airfare along with household bills: mortgage/rent, utilities, car, phone and the child’s individual insurance deductible.”

Families are eligible for assistance while the child is in treatment, ill as a result of treatment and for follow-up appointments that require the parent/guardian to miss work and lose income. 

“Unfortunately, not all children survive their battle with cancer,” Cundall said. “JFF helps these families with final expenses, and to encourage families as they endure the loss of their child, bereavement support is provided. To find out more about Jason’s Friends Foundation, please email or call: info@jasonsfriends.org or (307) 235-3421.”

REQUIEM, as the third film is titled, is all about Peter Parker, and his continued difficulty in tracking down Mysterio. Who IS Mysterio? Will Peter finally make the connection between what has happened in his beloved New York City and the forces at work in his personal life? What does Betty Brant's future hold? Will the editor of The Daily Bugle and Peter’s overbearing boss, J. Jonah Jameson, ever understand why he really hates Spider-Man? And what about AUNT MAY? 

Starring local talents such as Tim Womack, Linda Bayne, Jade Cundall, Jazmine Johnson, Ed Meyer, Tony Krotz, Nathan Adamo, Quaid Cundall, Slater Ashenhurst, Dana Vineyard and Lorna Dinnel, to name a few, this film is chock full of Platte County locations and its denizens, and as Quaid Cundall said, “My heart is full of gratitude for everyone’s help in making this dream a reality. I couldn’t have done this without all of you. This film belongs to everyone involved. I wish Dallin could have seen it.”  

“A big Thank You goes out to Western Coffee Co. and Curtis Hofrock and Heather Weber-Ferguson for sponsoring and hosting the event,” said Molly Cundall. “Don't miss the exciting conclusion of our friendly neighborhood hero's quest for justice! Rated PG-13 for scenes of psychological distress, drug use, smoking and high action.”

Cundall’s dreams came first came to the big screen in Wheatland Oct. 19, 2022, as he premiered the first movie in his Spider-Man trilogy. Spider-Man blossomed into reality for the now, 21-year-old writer, producer and filmmaker who introduced Platte County to his creation.

Cundall grew up and was home-schooled in Wheatland. In full costume for the media interview, he said, “My first name is Spider and my last name is Man.”

He had a yearning for the imaginary ever since he can remember, and he gravitated to Spider-Man which was originally introduced according to around.uoregon.edu, “to the world in August 1962, debuting in the anthology comic book Amazing Fantasy #15. Created by the collaborative team of writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, Spider-Man was an instant sensation with readers.”

That, of course would mean that Spider-Man was almost 40 years-old when Cundall was born. When Cundall was six he got a hold of a Spider-Man comic.

To just create one feature length film would be quite an accomplishment for anyone, much less a local teen, but Cundall is not just anyone, and as an overachiever, driven by a continuous raising of his own bar, he has created a trilogy of three full-length motion pictures.

Cundall said that you can see the progression and improvement and understanding of his editing techniques with each project he does. He said that it will be a life-long learning process.

One would wonder how long it would take a one-man show to completely do a movie, having to be the sole writer, screen editor, production lead and director as well as the cameraman. It cuts out a lot of middlemen as far as ideas and what Cundall is looking to achieve, but the process can long and laborious. Especially in light of the fact that each of his movies are three-hours long.

“Writing down the screenplay took about eight months,” Cundall said. “As far as the story goes, it was already designed for me by Stan Lee 60 years ago. I didn’t have to think too hard or too long; I just had to weave everything together so it was cohesive so that took about eight months to get it all jotted down.”

Cundall said that he would have liked to have met Stan Lee, but unfortunately Lee died Nov. 12, 2018.

“In the same vein as when I had that very first comic in my hand since I was little, speaking of VHS tapes, there was one little VHS tape that was the exact same story that the comic presented in cartoon form from the 1967 cartoon. That tape had a little starting section of it with Stan talking about how he envisioned Spider-Man himself. So I was aware of him as early as I was of Spidey. I always respected him and couldn’t get enough of his stories.”

Stan Lee, although a brilliant man was not always focused on the things in the classroom. Cundall has a very similar upbringing and mindset.

“It’s not so much that I had a problem with daydreaming,” he said. “I mean, there were always just other things that were engaging the creative process and sometimes school didn’t take precedence.”

It’s one thing to have a talent to film and to make the camera see what you want it to see and to edit it so that it’s clear to the moviegoer. It’s quite another to have a talent to write and write especially in the discipline of screen writing.

“That came very much from all those years in front of a camera just with the toys,” he said. “I think, for about three years I had been meticulously plotting a storyline with posing action figures which was literally just playing through middle school and high school. But through the process of a couple of those projects I sat down and started writing things so it was cohesive. That practice came from two or three years and when I sat down to do this screen play I kind of had a layout of how to get it all down. That was purely by accident.”

When Cundall was asked how much he related to Peter Parker and that struggle, he gave a one-word answer.

“Heavily,” he said. “I find that struggle very much in my own life.”

As for movie totals, he said that officially he’s completed three full-length feature films and when he first found out that Curtis Hofrock and Heather Weber-Ferguson, owners of Cinema West Theatre wanted to premiere his first movie last fall with the rest of his trilogy debuting this year, he said it was humbling.

“I was always hopeful to see it on the big screen as it was designed that way,” he said. “But I never necessarily planned on that. It was always start and stop on projects, never thinking that far ahead to actually see it there. It was surreal, sitting in the back actually seeing it on the big screen because I never fully intended on that even though it was always a hope.”

Since the digital format was a little different, Weber-Ferguson said that they had to tweak the process a bit to actually get it to play on the big screen.

“We actually ran it through a hard drive, into the computer and then into the projector to get it to work,” she said.

“We had a little bit of experience with some of the trailers that we get,” Hofrock said. “They come from movies that only get to be put on a flash drive and they’re not in the proper format to be plugged directly into the projector itself. So we have to kind of go around that by shooting it up into a different part and it is still able to come out on the projector. We started planning this six weeks before it showed, so we had time to get it in here. He also had trailers that we played for two weeks before it debuted. Trial and error with those just helped us get to where we needed to be for that night.”

As for what to expect and the bottom line for Cundall’s creation, he sums it up by saying, “It is a trilogy. It’s all tied in and it’s all the same story, but each film has a completely different flavor because they are talking about a completely different subject matter. It plays as one long film.”