John Travolta enjoyed a high-profile Cannes Film Festival this year with the world premiere of feature directorial debut Propeller One-Way Night Coach and surprise honorary Palme d’Or.
Set in 1962, the tale revolves around a young boy who is taken on a magical “milk run”, multi-stop flight from New York to L.A., with the plane setting down in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Kansas City and Denver along the way.
The one-hour movie, which released on Apple TV on May 29, was a long-gestated passion project for Travolta, adapted from his 1997 novella of the same name.
Joining Travolta on the red carpet, were the film’s producers Jason Berger and Amy Laslett, co-founders of L.A.-based company Kids at Play.
The husband-and-wife team have built their business and reputation around helping talent bring their creative ideas to life on the small and big screen, with past collaborators including Anthony Anderson, Niecy Nash, Keke Palmer and Tabitha Brown to name but a few.
“In a way, we’ve become their production company. They can come into the office. Sit with the editors, the producers, shoot the breeze, relax, write, whatever… it gives them a level of freedom, a level of safety. They trust us,” says Berger.
He points to Palmer’s 2020 Emmy Award-winning family reality TV show spoof Turnt Up with the Taylors, in which she plays several characters, as an example of how they work with talent.
“She had an idea and came in and then we re-crafted it a bit and convinced her to play all the roles,” he says. “We’ve also done cooking shows with Anthony Anderson and a series about love with Niecy Nash. People come to us with their ideas. We help craft them and develop a new format… and then we create a writers’ room around them. We can do from script to screen.”
Laslett say the company is also appreciated for its less-is-more approach when it comes to budgets.
“Some producers might have looked at John’s project and thought this needs $100 million when you look at all the stuff flying around… but we look at how we can be efficient and what’s best for the project. Throwing money is not always best for a project, nor is it needed, and frankly that’s not where the industry is right now,” she says.
Berger also emphasizes their openness to all formats, citing Brown’s pre-school series Tab Time, which began life on YouTube in 2021, an example of this.“We licenced it to YouTube and we distributed it to Peacock and Amazon… With John’s feature we’re doing it with Apple because it makes sense,” says Berger.
The couple first connected with Travolta through their managers Peter Principato, Randi Michel (who looks after Travolta) and Joel Zadak at Artists First.
“The project meant the world to him, but he was waiting for the right moment.. We were introduced to him and hit it off and shared the same vision,” says Laslett.
“It’s about finding joy in little things. It’s about the journey. Nothing really happens to him [the boy] in the best way possible… everything feels magical and spectacular and big to him… it reminds you to look at the world that way and how small things can actually be big.”
Berger reveals that their oldest son’s passion for planes meant he immediately clicked with the original novella.
“He’s a plane nut. He loves airplanes. Reading the book, I could relate to the mom, to the son. When we fly, he’s drawing pictures for the pilot, asking for the wings, wants to go up to the cockpit,” he says.
Laslett says that Travolta came to the project with a very clear vision and worked at speed on set.
“He had been building his vision for two decades. He had the clearest path forward of any director we’ve worked with… He knew what everyone should wear, what the props should be, the framing of every shot, and because he is also a working actor, his relationship with talent on set, was like, ‘We’ve got it, we’re moving’,” she recounts.
The aviation angle, the 1960s setting as well as Travolta’s own passion for flying and classic planes and attention to detail meant the film brought a very specific set of challenges.
“You’re looking at a very pinnacle time. 1962. It’s this golden age of Hollywood and aviation, with aviation at the time also going through a transition between propeller planes and jet planes,” says Berger.
“We agonized over saltshakers and we agonized over the dishware. This fits in the 1962 envelope best as it can be. John’s kind of an historian….He knows a lot about art, history, aviation, and mid-century design. There’s a lot of Hopper Esque tone. John really wanted it to be that you were transported to the time, but you weren’t taken out of the narrative, so everything that you’re seeing really is either a complete replica or it’s from the time.”
Filming took place under the radar in the first part of 2025, with the production setting down in New York and Kansas City and L.A.
“In Kansas, John has a Constellation plane, which is a four-propeller plane. We were lucky enough that he had one of those… during pre-production, we basically got mechanics to help us so that it could start and go down the runway… that was part of the process. It’s 60 years old. We needed it to move to get that one shot,” says Berger.
The L.A. set replicated the interior of a Boeing Model 707-121 jet plane, after a search for an original proved fruitless.
“The last 707 that was used was in Mad Men and they destroyed that plane. We took a fuselage from Oregon… it was a whole process,” says Berger.
Despite the detailed prop and set specs, the entire process was relatively speedy with development taking four-months, pre-production eight weeks and the shoot ten days spread over three weeks.
Amid the idiosyncrasies of the project, Berger and Laslett say Propeller One-Way Night Coach marked a continuation of their past work under their Kids at Play banner.
“This project really fitted in well with the company ethos. We’ve created a niche of talent having these ideas and then us making it happen,” says Laslett.
Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy.
Comments On Deadline Hollywood are monitored. So don't go off topic, don't impersonate anyone, and don't get your facts wrong.
Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() );