‘Rubber Hut’ Casts Rossum, Imperioli, Greenblatt for Debut

“Rubber Hut,” the debut feature from first-time director Hanna Gray Organschi, has stacked nine new names around Grace Van Patten for a 1992-set story about a drive-thru condom kiosk in an Italian Catholic Rhode Island town. The June 8 announcement of the nine-name cast arrived ahead of filming in Rhode Island, and includes Emmy Rossum, Michael Imperioli, Ariana Greenblatt, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Fabien Frankel, plus four more working actors. Production began June 1 in Warwick, on a set built around a recreated pink-and-white kiosk booth in a shopping plaza off West Shore Road.

The Cranston Condom Hut Behind the Film

The film grows out of a real Rhode Island story. The Cranston Condom Hut was a drive-through business that operated from a former Fotomat kiosk on a Cranston, Rhode Island, commercial strip, selling condoms to drivers who pulled up to a service window. An RI Monthly archive piece revisited the operation. The WPRI reporting in June noted that a “pink and white booth” with the name “Rubber Hut” in blue lettering was built in a shopping plaza off West Shore Road in Warwick for the production.

The Deadline synopsis frames Emanuella as a lightning rod in the community, a hero to local teens and an unlikely threat to her tight-knit community. The character’s setup is a 1992 Italian Catholic Rhode Island town where an ex-Pan Am stewardess, Emanuella, opens a drive-thru condom kiosk, with character details being kept under wraps. The project expands on “F*ck That Guy,” an Oscar-qualified proof-of-concept short Organschi made earlier, exec produced by Spike Lee, David Frankel, and Riva Marker.

The project’s development trail, in four moves:

1. 2024: “Rubber Hut” was selected for the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters, Directors, and Producers Labs, the Film Independent Fast Track, NYU’s Purple List, and the Gotham Week Project Market.
2. March 11, 2026: Deadline first reported Organschi’s debut feature, with Grace Van Patten attached as Emanuella.
3. June 1, 2026: Principal photography began in Rhode Island, with a recreated “Rubber Hut” booth built in a Warwick shopping plaza.
4. June 8, 2026: Deadline’s Matt Grobar broke the casting of Rossum, Imperioli, Greenblatt, DeWitt, Frankel, Bauer, Strazza, Stevens, and Staffieri.

Nine Names Join Van Patten in Rhode Island

The June 8 announcement came with character details kept under wraps, but the resumes attached to each new name do most of the signaling. Deadline listed the new arrivals with a recent credit for each, a shorthand way of telling distributors and festival programmers what kind of audience might follow each face into a theater. Production is already underway in Rhode Island. The full new cast, with reps, runs from a Golden Globe nominee to a working character actor on FX’s “The Bear.”

The most recognizable name on the list is Rossum, a Golden Globe nominee whose nine seasons as Fiona Gallagher on Showtime’s “Shameless” still anchor her public profile. She most recently appeared in Apple TV’s “The Crowded Room” and is set to star in and exec produce the Hulu series “Furious,” written by Liz Meriwether. Imperioli, fresh off “Song Sung Blue” with Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, currently appears opposite Patrick Dempsey in Fox’s “Memory of a Killer.”

Greenblatt just wrapped the Lionsgate threequel “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t,” joining Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, and Isla Fisher in the returning ensemble, and is also known for projects like “Barbie,” “Fear Street: Prom Queen,” and “Borderlands.” DeWitt, last seen in Netflix’s “Untamed” opposite Eric Bana, will next star opposite Andy Garcia in “Diamond,” which premiered at Cannes. Frankel, the “House of the Dragon” alum, joins four more new additions to the cast: Chris Bauer (“His & Hers”), Fina Strazza (“John Proctor Is the Villain”), Fisher Stevens (“Succession”), and Ricky Staffieri (“The Bear”). The Deadline scoop also lists each new addition’s full agency stack, with CAA, WME, Gersh, Paradigm, Buchwald, and IAG all named in the article. The lower-profile names in that cohort carry credits across HBO, FX, Netflix, and Broadway, with Bauer on Netflix’s “His & Hers” and Stevens on HBO’s “Succession.”

Organschi’s casting credit, per Deadline, goes to Matthew Glasner CSA, and the new arrivals are repped by CAA, WME, Gersh, Paradigm, Buchwald, and IAG. The Deadline article is the only public document on the cast at the moment, with production underway in Rhode Island. The June 8 announcement is the first public list of names on the project beyond Van Patten, and the trade coverage does not yet include any character details.

How a First-Time Director Earned the Roster

Van Patten, the lead, was the first name attached, with the March 2026 announcement of the debut feature as the first public marker of the project. Her recent credits include the third and final season of Hulu’s “Tell Me Lies,” which the trade noted drew more than 3.5 million viewers in its first day on Disney+ and Hulu, and the limited series “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox,” exec produced by Monica Lewinsky and Knox herself. Organschi told the trade she “couldn’t be more excited to bring Rubber Hut to life” and praised Van Patten for “razor sharp wit” and “absolute cool.” The March report also named “Nine Perfect Strangers,” “The Meyerowitz Stories,” “The Violent Heart,” “Under the Silver Lake,” and a Public Theater run of “Mother of the Maid” opposite Glenn Close among Van Patten’s earlier credits.

“Rubber Hut” participated in all three Sundance Institute Labs: the Screenwriters, Directors, and Producers Labs, and was also selected for the Film Independent Fast Track, NYU’s Purple List, and the Gotham Week Project Market. The Sundance Labs are split into Screenwriters, Directors, and Producers tracks, with “Rubber Hut” running through all three. The casting credit goes to Matthew Glasner CSA, and Organschi is repped by Untitled, per the March Deadline report.

Organschi’s prior short, “F*ck That Guy,” was Oscar-qualified and exec produced by Spike Lee, David Frankel, and Riva Marker, with the same team now expanded into the feature’s producing stack. The short won the Grand Jury Award at Proof Film Festival and Best Live Action Short at the deadCenter Film Festival, and was supported by the Spike Lee Production Fund and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. An interview with Organschi about her short film also covers her work on the feature. “Rubber Hut” was described by Deadline in March as an expansion of that short, with production set for the summer. The film is now shooting in Rhode Island, per WPRI.

• 3: Sundance Institute Labs completed (Screenwriters, Directors, Producers)
• 1: Proof-of-concept short ahead of the feature, “F*ck That Guy,” Oscar-qualified
• 11: Executive producers on the feature, per Deadline’s June 8 announcement
• 3.5M: Viewers on Hulu’s “Tell Me Lies” final season, first day on Disney+ and Hulu, per Deadline

Eleven Executive Producers and Three Production Houses

The producing team is layered. Three production companies share the credit: Elizabeth Woodward for Willa, whose recent credits include “The Voice of Hind Rajab” and Claire Denis’ “The Fence”; Tara Sheffer for Stone Fruit Productions, whose “A Lien” was an Academy Award nominee; and Organschi’s own Unlikeable Woman Productions. “Rubber Hut” is also being made in association with four additional companies: Desmar, The Godmother, Shortwave, and Madhouse Films.

Eleven executive producers share the second tier, and Deadline’s June 8 announcement listed all of them. The two most easily summarized are Anne Carey, whose credits include the Sundance winner “The Persian Version,” and Jason Michael Berman, whose slate includes Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” and Ben Affleck’s “Air.” The other nine EPs cover finance, development, and production-services roles on the project, per the announcement. The film’s casting is by Matthew Glasner CSA, the same credit that runs through the March and June announcements.

A second, smaller tier of co-executive producers sits just below. Andrew Alexander, Mark Hollinger, Alexandra Kordas, Meryl Metni, Monika Parekh, Lisa, and Matt Sonsini are co-EPs on the film, which is being cast by Matthew Glasner CSA. The film carries eleven executive producers and seven co-EPs, with Woodward, Sheffer, and Organschi herself as the three producers who run day-to-day, per Deadline. Both of the lead producers’ previous credits are Academy Award-nominated: Woodward’s Willa banner produced “The Voice of Hind Rajab” and Sheffer’s Stone Fruit Productions produced “A Lien.” Woodward’s Willa also has Claire Denis’ “The Fence” on its slate.

The June 8 cast announcement is the first piece of publicity built on a development trail that started with the Sundance Labs. The production team includes Willa, Stone Fruit, and Unlikeable Woman, with Sundance Institute backing on the script side. Production is underway in Rhode Island, and the June 8 announcement is the first public list of names on the project beyond Van Patten.

• Anne Carey
• Jason Michael Berman
• Mari Nakachi
• Ahmed Ezz
• D.D. Wigley
• Naomi Despres
• Michèle Marshall
• Charlie Traisman
• Katherine Romans
• Heather Feshbach
• Andrea Ajemian

What ‘Rubber Hut’ Has to Solve Next

The cast list solves one half of the marketing problem. It signals to distributors, festival programmers, and audiences that the project is being built with a face for every demographic the story touches, and it tells every agent on the new arrivals’ lists that the film is shooting on a real schedule. The harder half is the story itself, which Organschi has not shown a frame of. Character details are being kept under wraps, per Deadline, with production underway in Rhode Island.

The film is set in Cranston in 1992, in the same town as the real-life Cranston Condom Hut. The cast’s combined credits point at a festival-and-streamer path, where a 1992-period indie about a condom kiosk in a Catholic town can run as long as the script supports it. Production is underway in Rhode Island, with no release date or distribution partner attached, and Organschi’s prior shorts have only been seen in festival competition. The Cranston real-life story was the subject of an archive piece on the Cranston operation that revisited the kiosk. The same logic applies: a director placing a loaded cast around a first feature in a decade is what Kenneth Lonergan’s first feature in a decade is now doing at the Cannes market.