Ten years ago Rann and Gina Watumull dreamed big and started Hawaii Film Partners. They wanted to produce movies at home and take on the Hollywood studios.

This week, when their romantic adventure comedy “You May Not Kiss the Bride” premieres in theaters, audiences will finally have a chance to see whether the couple has succeeded.

“You May Not Kiss the Bride” is the story of a pet photographer who is forced to marry the daughter of a Croatian mobster, but behind the scenes it’s a story of perseverance.

Hawaii Film Partners was founded in 2002 with the goal of helping to build an indigenous film industry. Rann brought experience as an entrepreneur and former Bank of Hawaii wealth management adviser, and Gina, a legal background. Although they also owned a financial advice service, film and television held their gaze. They quickly tapped local actors and production crew for the TV series “Flight 29 Down,” which became a hit on Discovery Kids, and local animators for “Ape Escape” and “Guardians of the Power Masks.”

But what they really wanted was to make a movie.

It took the Watumulls five years to find the right screenwriter, nearly two years to get the script written, another year for filming and post production and, finally, two years to secure distribution.

The Watumulls snagged headliners Dave Annable, Katharine McPhee, Mena Suvari, Rob Schneider, Ken Davitian and Hawaii’s Tia Carrere, but they take more pride in having employed 90 percent of the production with local actors and crew when they shot it in 2009. Even the music is almost entirely from Hawaii artists.

But getting it to theaters was a struggle.

“It was a long, hard road and very difficult,” Rann Watumull said.

ALTHOUGH the finished movie tested well with audiences, distributors said its lead stars — McPhee and Annable — were better suited for TV. At the time, McPhee, who is now on the hit NBC show “Smash,” was known primarily as a runner-up on “American Idol.” Annable was starring on the ABC TV’s “Brothers & Sisters.”

“The studios loved it and had great things to say, but they have a formula for romantic comedies and that is to pair the biggest male and the biggest female star,” Gina Watumull said. “They don’t think outside the box. They like to put people in categories.”

The Watumulls refused to give up, but even after hiring an experienced third party to shop the film around, they got the same answer. Rann Watumull said it was like hitting an invisible ceiling.

“We had a lot of bumps on our heads,” he said.

They solved that by forming their own distribution company, a move that landed the film in Hawaii theaters beginning Friday, with wider release Sept. 21, in Washington, D.C., Miami, Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles and Seattle. This fall, the film will be screened internationally in 20 countries.

If audiences laugh at the right moments, it will be due to the script, which was written by Rob Hedden, who also directed the movie. Hedden had always dreamed of directing in Hawaii when the Watumulls asked him to come up with a story. Years earlier he had lived on Kauai with his sister and her husband, surfing every day.

Hedden brought an eclectic résumé, from episodes of TV’s “MacGyver” to “Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.” But he made the producers laugh with every draft as they worked through 2007 and 2008.

“A lot of people go with raunchy,” Gina Watumull said. “That’s easy and they are very successful. But Rob is more like ‘Romancing the Stone’ or ‘Moonstruck.’ It’s a cut above.”

The Watumulls look at their film as a validation for their dream.

“We are trying to create a new paradigm, to show we can do this here in Hawaii,” Rann Watumull said. “Not Hollywood comes to Hawaii, but Hawaii takes something to the world.”

AND that’s a wrap. …

———
Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.