Nathan Fillion

Plum gears up ’Trucker’ film - James Mottern will direct drama

Plum Pictures is starting production on "Trucker," an independently-financed drama that stars Michelle Monaghan, Nathan Fillion, Benjamin Bratt, Joey Lauren Adams and Jimmy Bennett.

James Mottern, who makes his feature directing debut, wrote the script. Plum’s Celine Rattray, Galt Niederhoffer and Daniela Taplin Lundberg will produce with Scott Hanson.

Monaghan plays a female truck driver who lives a careless life with no responsibility until she has to take in her estranged 11-year-old son after his father (Bratt) is hospitalized.

Monaghan, who just signed to star with Shia LaBeouf in the D.J. Caruso-directed "Eagle Eye" for DreamWorks, sparked to the script when it was submitted to her early. She attached herself before the film went out for financing, and she went so far as to get training and a license to drive a tractor-trailer.

Monaghan, who stars this fall in "The Heartbreak Kid," "Gone Baby Gone" and "Men of Honor," will be an exec producer of "Trucker" with John Allen, Robert Kessel, Pam Hirsch, Ed Hart, Bruce Lunsford and Frank Frattaroli.

Mottern, a former Nicholl Fellowship winner who once produced the Slamdance Film Festival, has written and directed docus for BBC and other networks.