Though TANGLED star Zachary Levi loves California, he does not miss living there.
“I grew up in California. I love California. It is a failed state,” he said in a recent Fox News Digital interview. “It is literally and figuratively on fire.”
The actor has lived in Austin, Texas, since 2017, and after seeing a lot of brokenness in Hollywood, he wants to create something new near his new hometown.
“Ever since I started working in Hollywood and I saw how broken it all was, I felt very compelled by God to go build a better Hollywood…where it’s owned and operated by the artists, where we can cut out all the middlemen, where we all can do really well, build a community,” he described.
It’s “not just a place to work,” Levi continued. “People can live there, and kids can go to school there. And we have an organic farm, and, like, all of the things that I think everybody really wants these days.”
His development is called Wyldwood Studios. It is a $100 million film and lifestyle campus near Austin. It will open its first two sound stages next year.
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“I left behind a lot of community and family and perfect weather in Southern California, but when you weigh it all out — and you must — you have to come to these points in your life, and you go, ‘Is all of that really worth the thing that I know I’m supposed to go build in the future to make a better world?’ And, to me, that calling on my life was more important,” Levi said.
Levi’s latest project is THE FIX, which he stars in with Liam Neeson. It came out on Sep. 11 and is rated R. The movie has a 21% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5/10 IMDB score.
The movie is about two CIA operators on a mission to earn redemption after their last one blows up in their faces.
“I wanted to do something fun, gritty, darker, in comparison to other roles that I’ve played in the past, and this gave me that and then some, because there was all of the great spycraft and twists and turns and revelations throughout the story, as well as this human foundation,” Levi said of the project.
Neeson told Moviefone that working on the movie with Levi was a good experience, as he expected.
“I knew Zach was a wonderful actor. He carries a lovely stillness and dignity, which is rare nowadays. It’s very admirable, and it was a wonderful experience acting with him,” he said.
Whether he’s working on new movies or developing Wyldwood Studios, Levi wants to make sure he’s following God’s call.
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