‘Odessa’ Premiering in LA at NBC Short Cuts Festival (Free Tickets!)

Al Thompson has enjoyed a very good year. His digital production company ValDean Entertainment closed pickup deals with all of its active series—including two of them Lenox Avenue and Odessa scoring BET Networks deals.

Now fresh off winning the Syfy “Imagine Greater” honors at NYTVF last month for Odesssa, Thompson is heading to Los Angeles to premiere the drama at the NBCUniversal Short Cuts Film Festival next Wednesday the 26th. (Free tickets to the event are available below.)

In case you wonder just what makes the mind of Al Thompson tick—something we’ve affectionately dubbed the “Al Thompson Hustle“—we tried to get a few pages from his playbook out of him in a recent interview, where he cites an early 2007 Tubefilter article on the series We Need Girlfriends as the impetus to fully jump into the web mix:

The series is one of four finalists competing for an arguably impressive winners package:

– A $60k Panavision camera package deal
– A development deal with NBC-Universal Television
– Meetings with NBC-Universal top Network and Studio Executives
– NBC-Universal Talent Holding Deal for Best Actor
– Post Production Media Services for Best Project and Best Director

“Folks, this is the largest and most prestigious venue we have ever shown any of our work, the Los Angeles Directors Guild,” said Thompson on the honor. “It’s like Jay-Z’s first time at the Madison Square Garden!!!”

Free tickets to the event can be reserved on the Odessa site, and Thompson is asking fans are asked to come out and support the series with some raucous applause—there is a development deal at stake here.

Cast includes Richard Herd (Star Trek Voyager), Fulvio Cecere (Battlestar Galactica), Skai Jackson (Disney’s Jessie), Clayne Crawford (A&E’s The Glades, Fox’s 24), James De Bello (Cabin Fever) and Al Thompson (The Royal Tenenbaums).