SCOTTISH actor James McAvoy has released a trailer for his new film about two young aspiring musicians from Dundee who make it big in the United States of America.
Making his directorial debut, McAvoy’s California Schemin’ is based on Gavin Bain’s autobiography Straight Outta Scotland and follows two Scots who manage to convince the music industry that they are a rap duo from California in a bid to land a record deal.
Featuring Outlander: Blood of My Blood’s, Séamus McLean Ross, and Anemone’s, Samuel Bottomley, the movie tells the story of the hilarious antics of the Silibil N’ Brains with portions of the film shot in Tayside.
StudioCanal started production of California Schemin’ in Dundee last November, with film crews spotted around the city.
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Due out in 2026, a trailer for the film has been released, showing notable Dundee landmarks like the pair of football stadiums and a multi-storey flat in Hilltown, along with Glasgow’s Barrowlands
The minute-and-a-half trailer includes the tagline “get rich or try lying” and gives a glimpse of the whirlwind story of how Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, from Dundee and Arbroath, duped an entire industry into believing they were American.
Ahead of the film’s release, McAvoy told Deadline News he wanted to “make people laugh as well as cry” while also leaving them feeling “bad” and “shocked”.
He said: “What environment do you need to base them in? You generally need to base them in environments that are a little bit free of the harsh realities or constraints or pressures of life.
“So lower income, backgrounds, working class – if you want to call it that – backgrounds don’t often feature in that type of movie. And it was really important for me to make a movie about people who face those issues and face those problems day to day, but they can still be in a film that is entertaining and aspirational and inspirational at times.”
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