Luke Barnett & Tanner Thomason, Filmmakers Behind Viral Short ‘The Crossing Over Express,’ Sign With Kaplan-Stahler
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Off the success of their viral short film The Crossing Over Express, writing duo Luke Barnett and Tanner Thomason have signed with Kaplan-Stahler for literary representation.
Amassing nearly two million views and an outpouring of messages from people around the world since its release last month on X, the short tells the story of a man seeking one last conversation with his late mother.
The project came together 20 years after Barnett’s own mom passed away when he was just 17. With only “a handful of pictures and zero videos” of her, on his birthday a couple of years ago he received a text message from an unknown number which simply said “Happy Birthday” and contained a YouTube link. “I clicked it, and my heart stopped.
It was my mom,” Barnett recalled on X. In the video, she was “telling me how proud she was of me and how she wondered what I’d become.” The director later found out the clip was from a 1999 school event, sent by his friend’s father.
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