Australian actor Jason Perini has won the Jameson First Shot competition and will direct Maggie Gyllenhaal in a short film produced by Kevin Spacey and his producing partner at Trigger Street Productions, Dana Brunetti.
Perini joins finalists Cameron Thrower (California) and Kat Wood (Sheffield, England) in heading to LA, where he'll shoot his film titled The New Empress.
Gyllenhaal and Trigger Street whittled the 2,700 entries down to twenty before deciding on the final three.
Perini has previously appeared in Underbelly as well as in two shorts he also wrote, Casa del Suenos (2015) and A Little Bit Behind (2011).
The three winners were surprised in their hometowns with billboards featuring their names next to Gyllenhaal's (see video above).
The actress, whose credits include The Dark Knight and Secretary, told Indiewire that "out of the twenty scripts, it was totally clear to me which three I can make. It's not that those three were objectively better, it was that they called to me as an actress".
"Two of the scripts are really wild. I think in my career I have chosen wild projects and played unusual people, but these [two characters] are so wild. I don't know if I'd make a whole movie based on these people, but I'm really excited to work with them in the short form, which is so great because you can take a risk."
Perini is repped by Sophie Jermyn Management.