LOS ANGELES—The second chapter of John Stagliano’s all-girl epic Hard in Love premieres May 27 at EvilAngel.com, followed by a June 6 release of the full movie via DVD and VOD.
Stars Samantha Bentley and 2016 AVN Female Foreign Performer of the Year Misha Cross, who wrote the two-part saga together, have joined Stagliano in promoting the project with a social media campaign that included a series of live Periscope broadcasts and a Twitter takeover by the two stars of Evil Angel’s account for a day. The latter resulted in nearly 166,000 impressions, a traffic increase of about 38 percent.
Both installments of Hard in Love run about four hours and include an additional half-hour of behind-the-scenes footage—available in all formats—showing the writing process and Stagliano’s on-set direction. Trailers for part 1 and part 2 are available at EvilAngelVideo.com.
Evil Angel domestic sales manager Justin Rich says the first Hard in Love has been getting a good response from distributors. “John’s big, ambitious features—like The Fashionistas and Voracious—have always done well. And this new one has incredibly marketable talent,” Rich commented, noting Cross' AVN accolade and Bentley's multiple appearances on the wildly popular HBO series Game of Thrones.
Added Stagliano, “Samantha can go from thoughtful and intelligent, in our script discussions, to a demon-driven psycho, seamlessly, believably and intensely. This is the second time I have edited a movie she was in for me, where I find the material we have created to be too disturbingly real for me to watch, at first.”
The director considers some of the movie’s best acting to be in a scene where Bentley must watch a provocative video of Cross. Says Stagliano, “Misha is a driven bitch who says to Samantha, ‘When you watch this, I hope your head explodes.’ Misha’s body looks like a teen, but her face and emotion are sophisticated and depraved.”
A major presence in Hard in Love is veteran British star Angel Long. “Samantha recommended I hire Angel to dominate her,” recalls Stagliano. “I was a fan of Angel’s when she did scenes in the early 2000s. Today she is a dom, and is obsessive about working out. Her flaming red hair and powerful, sexy, English-accented voice really work for me. The Brits always sound smarter and more depraved than Americans. Angel is the catalyst that ignites this jealousy-driven story of revenge and psycho depravity. She’s like Rocco in a boy/girl movie to me. She drives scenes.
“Rocco Siffredi offered me the use of his studio in Budapest," Stagliano continued. "Things always go better for me when Rocco is around. And we shot in Berlin! Dominique, the owner of Insomnia, offered to let me shoot at her club. Insomnia is where I shot my Fashionistas Safado movies, and is my favorite club in the world.”
He concluded, “I had the girls’ demented imagination to save me. As with so much of this movie, the ending was a surprise to me and my narrow thinking.”
To order Hard in Love 1 & 2, contact Justin Rich at [email protected] or (800) 442-6435 ext. 115. For foreign sales inquiries, contact Alexandra Kelley at [email protected] or (818) 787-1414 ext. 106.
