Cheri Newton loves storytelling. She wrote her first play in the fifth grade when her teacher gave her free rein to do as she wished for one whole week. Since then, Cheri has continually written and studied writing and multi-media. Even after receiving a Masters Degree in Media and Popular Culture, she continues to study the films and writing of the great storytellers. Her screenplays have attained Semi-Finalist status at the Moondance International Film Festival and ranked in the top 20% of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships.
Says Cheri, “My intent is to entertain and to share wisdom learned. My greatest joy is in seeing people feel, laugh -or cry when they read my writing!”
Mudlarks (Feature /TV Series)
“Nothing can be hidden from a clairvoyant Archeologist in training. But Portia’s intuitive gifts are a threat to her Professor who is in cahoots with mysterious and dangerous land developers who aim to distort British history for their own gain.”
In 2015, Cheri’s screenplay Mudlarks, set in London, ranked in the top 20% of Nicholls Fellowship. Since then she has reworked and rewritten it so that it is ready to be shared. She sees this as an ongoing series for adult audiences who love adventure- mystery-paranormal. The next in the series, set in Venice, is presently being drafted.
Mail Order Bride AKA Love In An Age of War
Michelle has worked hard and is finally able to quit her dead-end job and rent a space for the patisserie she and her now-deceased mother dreamed of opening in Santa Barbara, California. When the carriage house where she stores her patisserie equipment burns in a wild fire, Michelle is devastated. Her best friend Petra invites her to visit her family’s quaint lake-side dacha in Russia and, there, Michelle concocts an unusual plan. She signs onto an online Russia “Mail Order Bride” service hoping to trick a wealthy man in Santa Barbara into financing her dream. But her respite in Russia has some delicious surprises for her and Michelle is forced to make a difficult choice. A quirky, character driven, Romance/Adventure/Drama that received Semi-Finalist in Moondance International Film Festival.
Hula
A high-profile London couple converges at the location of their honeymoon in Kauai after their twenty-five year marriage is threatened by infidelity. Chased by paparazzi, and joined by their concerned family members- and a love-struck colleague, the couple reluctantly and humorously rediscovers, through the help of hula and some local Hawaiian elders, what it was that first brought them together. Sumptuously beautiful settings, rich characters- with a strong touch into Europeans learning from the ancient wisdom of Hawaiian culture.
Law of Similars 2020
Cheri’s most recently written screenplay drama, set in Philadelphia 1900, is about a young female medical student, Sophie, who navigates the changes in her father’s dying Homeopathy profession, as well as indulges her devotion to an undeserving son of an industrialist, who she has loved since childhood. It has the cinematic feel of James Ivory/Ismail Merchant classics like Remains of the Day or Howard’s End.
Mrs. Newton’s Cottage (a work in progress)
Three Mrs. Newtons live in different centuries, (1760’s, 1920’s and 1980’s) but their mid-lives in England intertwine in a mystical and special way, yielding karmic learning for the final Mrs. Newton, who wants to publish her eternal “how to navigate love and life” manual-so she does not have to re-learn it all again- in her next incarnation.