‘Monsters of California’: Former Blink-182 Frontman to Direct Coming of Age Sci-Fi Film

Tom DeLonge Directing Monsters of California

In the immortal words of former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge: “Work sucks, I know.”

But DeLonge is actually hard at work as we speak, making his feature directorial debut on a movie called Monsters of California. The film, a coming of age science fiction story about a group of kids who investigate paranormal events in Southern California, is currently in production and has a whole slew of newly announced cast members. Learn more about it below.

Tom DeLonge, the former Blink-182 musician and current Angels & Airwaves frontman, is best known for his pop-punk career, but he’s slowly carving out a second chapter as a filmmaker. Deadline reports that he’s making his feature debut with Monsters of California, “a coming of age adventure with a science fiction twist that follows teenager Dallas Edwards and his derelict friends on a quest for the meaning behind a series of mysterious, paranormal events in Southern California. The truths they uncover begin to unravel extraordinary secrets held tightly within the deepest levels of the Government.”

Newcomers Jack Samson, Jared Scott, and Jack Lancaster lead the cast with Samson playing Dallas Edwards, and they’ll be joined by Richard Kind (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Casper Van Dien (Starship Troopers), Arianne Zucker (Days of Our Lives), Gabrielle Haugh (13 Reasons Why) and Sports Illustrated model Camille Kostek (I Feel Pretty, the upcoming Free Guy).

DeLonge is producing the movie in addition to directing, and he also wrote the Monsters of California screenplay with Ian Miller. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s also set to write and perform original music for the film’s score. It’s all sparked from To The Stars Inc., a division of DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, which you can learn more about here:

As a UFO lover, this has been a story he’s been wanting to tell for quite some time. “I have been playing this story in my dreams for decades,” he said in a statement. “It represents all aspects of my strange existence, including growing up in San Diego suburbia as a disaffected teenage skateboarder. I had a tight tribe of friends who never missed an opportunity to piss people off and made me laugh so hard I would cry. The camaraderie, curiosity, angst and irreverence is everything that lead me to Blink-182 and this story is layered with my obsession with the tightly blurred lines between science and science fiction.”

This sounds suspiciously like Strange Times, a project he was developing several years ago that never came to fruition. It’s likely the same story, just under a new name.

Previously, he directed an animated short film called Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker, which you can watch in full here. DeLonge also produced and scored a project called Love that we wrote about back in 2011.

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