What if your prom date showed up with green hair and a shark-fin on his outlandish car? What if you discovered your book club date spent his mornings making gross body sounds as a DJ for an alternative rock station? What if the stress of selling your business made you oblivious to the fact that your boyfriend had a diamond ring in his pocket?

     Clay Essig makes an extraordinary directorial debut with Fortune Cookie - a bold, fresh take on romantic comedy which continually surprises and delights with its candid and poignant commentary on dating and romance. Scripted by Rob Thomas (Dawson's Creek, 20th Century Fox's Drive Me Crazy, Space Ghost: Coast To Coast, creator of ABC's series Cupid), Fortune Cookie, his first screenplay was instrumental in launching his film and television career. The story brilliantly explores dating rituals of teens, X'ers, and mid-lifers in the modern world.

     Welcome to The Empire, an offbeat Chinese restaurant, where in one serendipitous evening, the three couples converge for dates that will, in varying ways, shake their assumptions about who and what they're looking for. Their views of life and love are tested against the whims of a cynical but insightful fortune cookie writer. By handwriting witty, often prophetic fortunes from the descriptions given him by a sardonic waiter, each couple is unknowingly nudged toward romantic reward or emotional ruin.

     Fortune Cookie suggests, modern men and women still hunger for total-immersion love, even if they can't quite bring themselves to take the plunge. It offers audiences a lighthearted, tender look at romance as we experience it today; a fool's paradise where even with confirmed reservations at The Empire, the smartest men and women find themselves tangled in the comic web of modern love.