VICE

A film by Harley Wallen
Coming 2027 · post-production

A rookie detective.
Seven dead People.
One killer.

A rookie detective handpicked for a case no one else could crack goes undercover as a sex worker to catch a killer — and comes out the other side unrecognizable.
Genre
Contemporary Thriller

Release

2027

Status

Post-production

Language

English

Location

Flint, Michigan

Production

Clarillon Pictures
Painted Creek Productions

SYNOPSIS

Flint, Michigan. Seven sex workers are dead, and the department has written them off. Detective Sanchez has not. She is early in her career, but her superior picks her for the case regardless — she has instincts and qualifications the veterans have lost.
She goes undercover, becoming one of them. Walking their streets. Taking their risks. Driven by one thing: no more women die on her watch.
What starts as a case becomes a transformation. She is kidnapped. She is nearly killed. And she claws her way out — a hardened, relentless agent who will not stop until the killer answers for every woman he took.
Vice is a gritty, high-stakes thriller shot on location in Flint, Michigan, for a real and unforgiving authenticity.
Principal photography was completed on 31 August 2026. It is the first release from Clarillon Pictures, co-producing with Painted Creek Productions

How much of herself does a woman have to lose to save someone else?

“Vice has that energy I loved in the thrillers of the ’90s, but we’re not trying to simply recreate those movies. We wanted to take that tension, danger and unpredictability and bring it into the world we live in now.”

HARLEY WALLEN

writer and director

“Seven women were written off before this story begins. That’s why I wanted to make it — Vice is about what it costs one woman to make sure they count.”

BLANCA BLANCO

lead actress and producer

THE APPROACH

The story belongs to Sanchez. The killer is the engine; the transformation is the film. Who she is when she is chosen, and who she has become by the time the case closes.
Vice takes its craft from the character-driven thrillers of the 1990s and moves that sensibility into the present — the tension and the unpredictability, in service of a woman who refuses to let the case go.
The film was shot entirely on location in Flint, Michigan — not as a stand-in, but as part of the film’s identity. Flint carries a texture no set can manufacture.
The seven victims are the women the system had already stopped counting. That is the film’s starting point and its argument: the people easiest to overlook are the ones whose deaths reveal the most about the place they lived.

STILLS

CAST

BLANCA BLANCO

is Detective Sanchez
Betrayed · Finding Nicole · Tale of Tails · Eye for Eye

HARLEY WALLEN

is Mikey
The Devil’s Left Hand · Fathers · Betrayed

KAITI WALLEN

is Pixie
Fathers · Finding Nicole · Ash and Bone

AARON NOBLE

is Don
Kill Devil Hills

YAN BIRCH

is Jimmy
The People Under the Stairs, dir. Wes Craven · Charmed · Betrayed

GEORGE AVGUSTOS

is Mark
Muzzle

FILMMAKERS

HARLEY WALLEN

writer, director, producer
Writer, director, producer and actor. Films include Betrayed, Finding Nicole, Ash and Bone, The Devil’s Left Hand and Fathers, with festival recognition and international distribution. His work centres on commercially accessible genre films driven by strong characters.

BLANCA BLANCO

lead actress and producer
Blanco leads the cast and produces. An actress and author, she is President of Clarillon Pictures, which she co-founded to make the stories she was not seeing made. Vice is the company’s first release.

JOHN WINTHROP

executive producer
Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Clarillon Pictures, which he co-founded. Vice marks his debut as an executive producer.

KAITI WALLEN

producer
Producing partner at Painted Creek Productions and a continuing creative collaborator with Wallen. She also appears in the film.

KYLE MORGAN

director of photography
Morgan brings the visual language of The Dirty D, the Detroit-set crime drama that built a substantial streaming audience on Tubi and Peacock.

PRODUCTION COMPANIES

CLARILLON PICTURES

Clarillon Pictures makes uplifting, character-driven films that highlight underrepresented stories and voices — about people who transform their own lives and leave audiences believing they can too.
Co-founded by Blanca Blanco, President, and John Winthrop, Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer. Vice is the company’s first release.

PAINTED CREEK PRODUCTIONS

The production home of Harley Wallen and Kaiti Wallen, with an established body of independent genre features carrying festival recognition and international distribution.

PRODUCTION DETAILS

Production country
United States

Shooting location

Flint, Michigan

Status

Post-production

Language

English

Genre

Contemporary thriller

Principal photography

Completed 31 August 2026

JOHN WINTHROP

From Paris to London to Los Angeles, Winthrop rose fast. He ran European operations for a major American conglomerate, then took the reins as CEO of its LA headquarters — steering a portfolio spanning real estate development, oil and gas, and pharmaceuticals. When the company was acquired by a Japanese powerhouse, Winthrop didn’t slow down — he went out on his own, founding Veritas Imports and building it into a thriving wine and spirits import and distribution business.

It’s a trajectory Winthrop knows firsthand: reinventing yourself, betting on your own instincts, and rising again in a new arena. That understanding is what drew him back to the world he’d glimpsed onstage decades earlier. Alongside partner Blanca Blanco, he founded Clarillon Pictures with a mission close to his own story — telling uplifting, character-driven films about people who transform their own lives and leave audiences believing they can too. As Chief Executive Officer, Winthrop brings the discipline of a dealmaker and the instincts of an entrepreneur to every project on the slate, which now includes Vice (working title), directed by Harley Wallen, set for release in 2027.
Winthrop previously served on the boards of LA Opera and the French-American Chamber of Commerce, and remains deeply engaged in his two home communities of Pasadena, California, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.