The summer blockbuster season is mostly a wash this year, but Kia has come to the rescue with a "Features Film" commercial that stars multi-soap alum Jeff Branson (ex-Ronan Malloy, The Young and the Restless; ex-Shayne Lewis, Guiding Light; ex-Jonathan Lavery, All My Children).
The six-minute Kia advertisement, which spoofs major summer films, features Branson as a getaway driver who's on the run from the Mob. The ad spot unfolds over the course of one night, with Branson's character enlisting eight Kia models -- Forte, Soul, Stinger, Niro EV, Niro HEV, Seltos, Sportage, and Sorento -- to help him break free from the seedy underworld and turn his life around.
Says the official teaser for the ad made by creative agency David&Goliath, "You can't outrun the past. But one man will try to outdrive it. One getaway driver. Eight cars. One shot at redemption."
Branson won the hearts of soap opera fans in his debut role as All My Children's Jonathan Lavery, which he played from 2004 to 2007. He went on to play Guiding Light's Shayne Lewis from 2008 to 2009, winning the 2009 Daytime Emmy Award in the Outstanding Supporting Actor category (he tied with AMC actor Vincent Irizarry, who also won in the category for his work as Pine Valley doctor David Hayward). Branson's final soap role was that of The Young and the Restless' Ronan Malloy, which he played from 2010 to 2012 before going on to appear in shows like Chosen, Supergirl, Major Crimes, and Ten Days in the Valley. His most recent role, as Soap Central previously reported, is that of real-life astronaut Neil Armstrong in the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind.
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