LOS ANGELES — Evil Angel has announced the release of "Hard In Love 2," director John Stagliano's concluding chapter of a girl/girl love affair with Misha Cross and Samantha Bentley.
“Hard In Love 2” premieres on May 27 at EvilAngel.com and on June 6, Evil Angel will release the sequel on DVD and VOD.
Evil Angel has been promoting the “Hard In Love” movies with a social media campaign. Bentley, Cross and Stagliano interacted with fans in a series of live Periscope broadcasts, and when the two adult stars took over Evil Angel’s Twitter account for a day, the company reports their tweets about “Hard In Love” resulted in nearly 166,000 impressions, a traffic increase of about 38 percent.
Bentley and Cross wrote the entire “Hard In Love” project, which is described as "embodying love at its most dark and psychotic." Each installment runs about four hours and includes an additional half-hour of behind-the-scenes footage — available in all formats — showing the writing process and Stagliano’s on-set direction. Trailers for “Hard In Love 2” and “Hard In Love” at EvilAngelVideo.com show intense fetish domination motivated by the story's themes of erotic betrayal and vengeance.
Stagliano explained the genesis of the project. “Somehow, I found myself escorting Ms. Bentley and Ms. Cross to a party at Insomnia in Berlin," he said. "I realized I was in the presence of two very talented women. We talked about love, and falling hard. I soon realized I was out of my league trying to create a story about female emotional drama. Samantha and Misha are much more intuitively equipped. We connected with regard to the type of sex I wanted to shoot and they loved to do. ‘Hard In Love’ was born.”
Justin Rich, domestic sales manager of Evil Angel, said the first “Hard In Love” has been getting a good response from distributors. “John’s big, ambitious features — like ‘The Fashionistas’ and ‘Voracious’ — have always done well," he said. "And this new one has incredibly marketable talent. Misha is the 2015 XBIZ Foreign Female Performer of the Year and Samantha does big-time, mainstream drama, appearing in multiple episodes of HBO’s ‘Game Of Thrones.’”
Stagliano said he found Bentley and Cross truly compelling. He observed, “Samantha can go from thoughtful and intelligent, in our script discussions, to a demon-driven psycho, seamlessly, believably and intensely. This is the second time I have edited a movie she was in for me, where I find the material we have created to be too disturbingly real for me to watch, at first.”
The director considers some of the movie’s best acting to be in a scene where Bentley must watch a provocative video of Cross. Stagliano remarked, “Misha is a driven bitch who says to Samantha, ‘When you watch this, I hope your head explodes.’ Misha’s body looks like a teen, but her face and emotions are sophisticated and depraved.”
A major presence in “Hard In Love” is Angel Long, who like Bentley is British. “Samantha recommended I hire Angel to dominate her,” Stagliano recalled. “I was a fan of Angel’s when she did scenes in the early 2000s. Today she is a dom, and is obsessive about working out. Her flaming red hair and powerful, sexy, English-accented voice really work for me. The Brits always sound smarter and more depraved than Americans. Angel is the catalyst that ignites this jealousy-driven story of revenge and psycho depravity. She’s like Rocco in a boy-girl movie to me. She drives scenes.”
Stagliano shot “Hard In Love” in some of his favorite locations, with the help of trusted friends. “Rocco Siffredi offered me the use of his studio in Budapest," he said. "Things always go better for me when Rocco is around. And we shot in Berlin! Dominique, the owner of Insomnia, offered to let me shoot at her club. Insomnia is where I shot my ‘Fashionistas Safado’ movies, and is my favorite club in the world.
“I had the girls’ demented imagination to save me,” he added. “As with so much of this movie, the ending was a surprise to me and my narrow thinking.”
For sales inquiries, contact Justin Rich at JRich@EvilAngel.com or (800) 442-6435, ext. 115. For foreign sales inquiries, contact Alexandra (Alex) Kelley at Alex@EvilAngel.com or (818) 787-1414, ext. 106. For more information about Evil Angel Wholesale, visit their B2B site at EvilDistributor.com. Evil Angel can also be followed on Twitter.
