Director Cameron Sawyer told the official Fablehaven Film YouTube channel that his team had gone through 5,435 open auditions and was sending 253 of them to callbacks. That was Weekly Update 5, posted May 12, a week after Deseret News still had the pile at more than 4,000. The screenplay, which Sawyer and producer Christian Busath held up on camera in April, is 111 pages. Nobody has been announced as Kendra or Seth.
Fablehaven is Brandon Mull’s 2006 preserve story, the first of five books, about two siblings who drink the milk and start seeing the fairies on their grandparents’ hidden grounds. Haven Films is making the picture with Mull as a paid consultant. Angel is producing and distributing, with a 2027 theatrical window. Sawyer wants all five novels if the first one holds. The studio’s March update said cameras in late summer 2026.
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Sawyer’s May 12 update: 5,435 open auditions, 253 callbacks. Watch on YouTube
On April 10 Sawyer said the script was done. On April 6 he opened auditions on BackerKit, after fans kept asking how to try out. They closed April 15. Weekly Update 3, April 24, put the count over 5,000 and said the production was “out to some really big actors” for Grandpa and Grandma Sorenson, with a hope of naming them soon. Weekly Update 4, May 1, gave the BackerKit close: $1,113,517, money Sawyer said would go to effects and production design. Deseret later put the backers over 6,000. Grandma and Grandpa were still unnamed. He promised the first-round number the following week. That number was 253.
In March the channel posted StoryCon test footage of a fairy on wires, wings and all. An April short showed the same idea as a camera test against bluescreen, with a monitor in the foreground proving the camera was rolling on something. Official concept art of Muriel’s shack went up the same week. Deseret ran photos of a dining-room test with stand-in players, and of Sawyer sharing storyboards with Mull on a set. The tests are public. Kendra and Seth are still a blank.
StoryCon test footage the official channel posted in March.
Deseret, in May, said the next hurdle was locking the kids and dating a shoot Sawyer hoped to start this fall, with Victoria Burrows, who cast The Lord of the Rings, and producer Ted Field of the Jumanji films helping on the last pass. Sawyer told the paper he wanted at least 90 percent of the picture in Utah. Angel’s own language was late summer. Late summer is over. The Facebook page still says theaters in 2027. Mull, talking to Polygon in August, called the screenplay a dream and stayed realistic about a modest-budget first book that has to make a backyard preserve feel real. He listed the effects that have to work: the fairies, Midsummer’s Eve, Seth’s transformation, Hugo, the last fight. He did not announce a cast.
Weekly updates on YouTube stopped after May 12. A Facebook weekly on May 29 was still about casting, previs, and the 20th anniversary. Fall is here. Sawyer told the people who already pledged they would hear about callbacks. They heard a number. They have not heard a name. The late-summer start in Angel’s press note has passed without a public cameras-up. 2027 is still on the Facebook page. The next cast name, if it comes, will probably land on that same channel.
