Pittsburgh filming boom continues with local story

Ohio Valley General Hospital may have looked more like the set of General Hospital or ER this week as film crews and a slew of actors (Daryl Hannah, Steve Gutenberg & George Lopez are a part of that list) moved in to begin taping “Shannon’s Rainbow”. The story isn’t only being taped locally, but was written locally by actor John Mowod and KDKA morning man Larry Richert about a 17-year-old girl and a horse named Rainbow. It’s about an experience Mowod’s own brother had with a horse a decade ago. Joe Mowod was a horse trainer at The Meadows Racetrack at the time and had a horse who was ill. Ignoring the recommendations that the horse should be put down, Mowod nursed the horse back to health hoping that it could live a normal life. The horse ended up surpassing that goal and won a race at the Red Mile in Kentucky. That was the nucleus for John Mowod’s creation.

Mowod and Richert picked up steam on the project about five years ago when they met Frank Johnson, co-founder of Summit Works Films. From there they fought hard to have the film shot in Pittsburgh. “We wrote Western Pennsylvania into the script. The money people, they
wanted to make it in New York, New Mexico, Utah, Illinois. We fought
really hard to get it made in Pittsburgh,” Mowod told the Tribune-Review. It took a while, but the decision to film here was nudged on when Pennsylvania passed a $75 million tax credit for film productions shot here.

In addition to the “A-list” actors, look for John Mowod to play the role of a horse trainer in the film. Larry Richert will make an appearance too.