'Landline' movie filmed in Chicago, features Cubs storyline

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Wrigley Field and former Cubs player Ryne Sandberg play key roles in the new "Landline" movie, which was made in Chicago and takes on social media and one man's devotion to the Cubs.

"Landline" opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, and will run for a week. The film comes out on demand through Freestyle next week

Matthew Aaron, the movie's director and star, plays a marketing executive who gets shut out of a promotion because he's not as savvy with social media as his young colleague. What really hurts is that he's lost the chance to have the Cubs as a client.

Tom Arnold plays his dad and he's got a grudge against high tech, too.

Aaron, a lifelong Cubs fan who was born in Chicago and grew up in Downers Grove, studied at DePaul University and got serious about comedy at the Second City.

He said he loved coming home to make this movie

"I did one stint in LA where I was living in my car for three months, I got robbed, I lived in my car outside Drew Barrymore's house," Aaron said.

"Landline" was shot in just 2.5 weeks.

"For 18 days I think we did a killer job, it's such a sweet film, but it's hard, you gotta shoot Wrigley field in 12, 16 hours, it's like 10 minutes in the movie," Aaron said.

He said he never believed he'd have a chance to shoot at Wrigley or to get Sandberg to star as himself in the film.

"We went to Major League Baseball just for the licensing and they read the script and they loved the script they thought it was cute, this is a really good film for us. Major League Baseball said, 'You should film at Wrigley Field' and 'How would you feel about Ryne Sandberg?'" Aaron said.

"We predicted in the movie they were going to win," he said. "I edited it before they won, and I was like, 'Boy, if they don't win we're gonna look stupid' but they won."