A strange prophecy sends an isolated artist on a three-day collision with grief, love, creativity, and the life he’s spent years avoiding.
What If You Actually Knew?
Most people have entertained the thought at some point: What would you do if you knew exactly when your time was up?
For Kai, the answer arrives from an unlikely source. Already reeling from losing his job as an elementary school art teacher, the lonely artist encounters an oracle at a bar who gives him a brutal deadline: He has three days left to live.
That simple premise drives 3, a new feature written by Michael K. Ward and produced by Sandy Deerman, into territory far more complicated than a supernatural countdown. Kai has spent years carrying grief, family trauma, guilt, and the feeling that he has somehow failed to become the person he was supposed to be. The prophecy doesn’t create those problems. It simply gives him a clock.
Ward originally came to the story after being approached by Chris Abraham and Peter Nay with a basic question: What if someone knew when they were going to die?
“I was like, you know, we can’t give them three weeks. That’s too long,” Ward recalls. “Three hours is too short. But I have this three kind of going through my mind, but three days.”
The idea eventually became a short film that performed well on the festival circuit before expanding into the feature-length 3.
Art, Grief, and the Things We Carry
Kai’s job as an art teacher is more than background decoration. His eventual dismissal, amid budget cuts and questions about the value of arts education, became the first major crack in a life already held together by routine.
That part of the story comes directly from Ward’s own experience. He spent 15 years teaching theater arts at a public school before becoming a college writing teacher, and the film’s concern with arts education grew from that experience.
“The arts are the ones that get cut first,” Ward says. “If they’re gonna do a pull out program, they’re gonna take them out of their arts class.”
Kai is carrying plenty besides the loss of his job. His complicated relationship with his brother, the death of his father, and the responsibility he assumed for his family all shape the way he moves through the world. Even when opportunities finally appear, he has trouble believing he deserves them.
Ward says that emotional weight came from somewhere personal.
“When I watch it, when my wife watches it, you can see there’s a lot of me in there,” he says. “And things that I’ve been through personally.”
That vulnerability is part of what gives 3 its central question some teeth. Knowing you’re going to die doesn’t magically erase everything you’ve been through. If anything, it forces Kai to confront how much of his life has already been spent acting as though he doesn’t deserve to fully live it.
A Three-Day Crash Course in Living
Enter Mia, a nurse who meets Kai just as his strange new deadline begins. Their connection gives the movie its romantic center, but Mia also becomes one of the first people to look past Kai’s defenses and see the person underneath them.
As their relationship develops, Kai has to reckon with something more frightening than the prophecy itself: What happens when somebody actually sees something worthwhile in you?
That tension gives 3 its particular blend of romance, drama, and dark comedy. Ward describes the film as a “dark comedy, romantic dramedy,” a combination that reflects the story’s willingness to move between grief and levity without pretending either one cancels out the other.
The film also features Eric Roberts as the fortune teller who sets the entire story in motion, alongside Michael Paré. Ward says Roberts arrived with the role already mapped out in his head, while Paré took a markedly different approach, spending significant time rehearsing with Caleb Ruminer, who plays our main character Kai.
“Working with two actors of that caliber and that long of a career, it was really interesting watching both of their processes,” Ward says.
The result is a cast that gives the small-town story some familiar faces while keeping the focus on Kai’s increasingly strange final three days.
A Hometown Story With a Counterculture Question
3 was filmed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, although Ward originally wrote the screenplay with Tyler, Texas, in mind. For producer Sandy Deerman, Las Cruces offered something more personal. She grew up there, and the house used as Kai’s home was actually her mother’s house.
Ward says the location ultimately fit the story because he wanted the film to have a hometown quality that could belong to almost anyone.
“A hometown is different for everybody,” he says. “So that’s kind of what I feel like Las Cruces did.”
There is also a natural connection between 3 and the kind of late-night existential questions that have long been part of cannabis culture. This isn’t a stoner comedy, nor is cannabis the point of the story. But the movie’s central thought experiment—if you had only three days left, would you finally stop worrying about what might happen and start actually living?—is exactly the sort of question that can send a smoke session down a surprisingly deep rabbit hole.
And that may be the most interesting reason for High Times readers to spend some time with 3. Beneath the prophecy, romance, family history, and dark humor is a question that doesn’t require a supernatural fortune teller to become uncomfortable:
How much of your life are you actually living right now?
Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was published as part of a paid commercial arrangement with the producers of 3. Details about the film’s plot and premise, its origins and development, casting and production, filming locations, and the accounts and quotes attributed to writer Michael K. Ward and producer Sandy Deerman reflect information provided by the sponsor.
