7 Brothers, a Rom-com and a Dream
Chuck Kinnane recalls a cool autumn morning in late 2017 when a phone call from Kevin James changed the course of a family enterprise. A little more than a year into a fledgling production company formed by six brothers and a brother-in-law in Little Compton, R.I., the siblings began a collaboration that has grown from backyard VHS reenactments to feature films.
When the pandemic halted much of the industry, James invited the brothers to quarantine and work out of his Long Island garage. They made dozens of short videos for his YouTube channel — including the viral Sound Guy sketches — which helped turn the channel from a few hundred subscribers to nearly a million and led to larger projects: the Netflix sports comedy Home Team and now Solo Mio, a rom-com in which James plays an American left at the altar who heads to Italy alone for his honeymoon.