I've been following the exploding career of young actor Michael Welch for several years on this blog. In February 2008, PROnetworks was the first online to announce that he had been cast as Mike Newton in Twilight which has now, of course, become a worldwide phenomenon. He reprises that same role in the next two films in the series, The Twilight Saga: New Moon and Eclipse.

In June I was pleased to announce that Welch would be starring in Unrequited, the first feature from Jason Epperson, runner-up on the Steven Spielberg-produced Fox reality series On The Lot.

After coming in second among hundreds of would-be directors, Epperson searched for a script he could wrap his head around for his first film. He found it in Jeff Day's Unrequited, a psychological thriller about an 18-year-old (Welch) who snaps after a series of setbacks. "Most of them, I knew within the first five pages it's nothing I wanted to do," Epperson said. "When I read Jeff's script, I read the whole thing in an hour and knew it was something I wanted to do."

Unrequited was shot in Epperson's home state of Kentucky. The independent film is produced by writer Jeff Day's Lucky Day Studios. Mark Freiberger is co-producer. Epperson has a first look deal with Paramount Pictures and Freiberger has a deal with Anchor Bay, so the film already has distributor interest.

Welch has an official site, an official MySpace, a Facebook, and Message Board.

Unrequited has an official site and Facebook.