Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end, is an All-Pro pick, nine-time Pro Bowler, and three-time Super Bowl champion. Add’movie producer’ to your list of achievements. Kelce has been identified as the executive producer of My Dead Friend Zoe, a new dark comedy drama starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Gloria Reuben.
The film premiered over the weekend at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, but Kelce was not present to see it. Instead, he was halfway around the world, watching his girlfriend Taylor Swift perform one of her six Eras Tour gigs in Singapore.
Travis was seen on camera standing in a suit, watching his significant other perform, and then going out of the arena with her to a restaurant after the show. Kyle Hausman-Stokes, a combat veteran and Bronze Star recipient is directing Kelce’s executive-produced Austin film.
‘It was really weird to get that news,’ Hausmann-Stokes said of Kelce’s executive producer role on the movie. Travis is a supporter of the military and veterans, and when this project came across his team’s desk, they agreed to tackle it in large part because of that.
‘It was just really lovely and touching, and the extra attention and energy that he’s brought to the project is only going to help it reach a larger audience.’
The film’s SXSW synopsis reads as follows: “My Dead Friend Zoe is a dark comedy-drama that follows the journey of Merit, a U.S. Army Afghanistan veteran who is at odds with her family due to the presence of Zoe, her dead best friend from the Army.”
‘Despite the perseverance of her VA group counselor, her mother’s stern love, and the levity of an unexpected love interest, Merit’s cozy-dysfunctional connection with Zoe keeps the two isolated from the outside world. Merit’s estranged grandfather, locked up in the family’s historic lake house, begins to lose his way and needs help, which he refuses to accept.
‘At its core, this is about a troubled friendship, a split family, and the various ways we process sorrow.’ The film does not yet have a distributor or a date planned for a broader release.