WHEELING — Following a successful sold-out premiere, Hitman: The Slaughter will be showcased at the Ogalbay Institute Towngate Theater on Saturday at 7 pm.

Ohio Valley residents Filmmaker Seth Nardo and Screenwriter Ian Falcione teamed up to bring the action-packed, dark comedy that tells the story of two hitmen, Foxy and Chachi, who end their criminal partnership when Chachi decides to retire. Betrayed, Foxy tackles his work more recklessly than ever, leading to botched hits, vengeful mobsters, and a deranged pig farmer.

“We had a sellout success with over 300 people at Marquee Cinemas, and we are now releasing it at the Towngate Theater on Market Street here in Wheeling. It brings a lot of art together, including the love of theater and movie-making, and is a cool location to be able to present this locally made film,” Nardo said.

Falcione added that he’s hopeful that the turnout will be as large as the premiere at Marquee Cinemas in February.

“It was a great premiere, everybody in the community showed out, we had a lot of people come. This is really a warm feeling to kind of have so many people we know all come together,”

He said.

Falcione began writing the movie two years ago. Once the writing was finished, it roughly took the crew one year to produce the movie.

“I came up with the bare bones of it out in woods pilgrimage, just like in a few days, and as we started filming, we were like towards the end and had other ideas, like other characters we kind of wanted to flesh out, and some other opportunities came up for other locations. A few people said that they would help us out, so we just took advantage of it, which made the movie better,” Falcione said.

He previously said that the set they used for the hitman’s secret lair was a building attached to the Bird’s Nest clothing store with Nardo adding that the bar Freddie’s in the film is the Tiger Pub in Shadyside, and Bellaire’s own Flanagan’s bar is featured in the movie with its real name.

The duo said that Saturday’s screening will be the last time the movie will be publicly shown unless it gets accepted into the various film festivals they submitted it.

“We’ll eventually get it on Tubi once we get the go-ahead on that. But this is really the last release publicly before the film festivals, so if you have not been able to check it out, check it out now,” Nardo said.

He added that his opinion is if someone dreams of becoming an independent filmmaker and hasn’t started their first film, he recommends taking the leap and start creating.

“If you just start the first few pages, everything else will kind of fall into place. I realized that we started with 35 pages, and it ended up with like 120, so I just think once you get started, the ball starts rolling,” he said.

Tickets for the premiere can be purchased at sethnardomedia.com.