Borat + Gone Girl
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
In The Industry News, Netflix is not easy. FilmLA gives us the hard truth. Samuel Goldwyn Films survives.
Actor Spotlight: The new 007 is a killer. Mickey Rourke roars. And Bane + Bond + Mirren are Associates.
Indie Filmmaker Spotlight: A24’s biker gang. Cannes you see the light. A very Cold Wallet.
International News: Australia’s million-dollar ashes.
Let’s go!
I had a great chat with Netflix’s Will & Haper producers Rafi Marmor and Chris Leggett. Check out the conversation here on our new podcast.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Netflix says Ladies First! The streamer sets Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) to lead a new comedy feature from Me Before You (2016) director Thea Sharrock.
The upcoming dark comedy is an adaptation of Eleonore Pourriat’s 2018 French Netflix film Je Ne Suis Pas Un Homme Facile (I am Not an Easy Man, trailer).
Synopsis:
Baron Cohen will play an unrepentant womanizer who finds himself in a parallel world dominated by women. A fiery female counterpart (Pike) makes things even more complicated.
Ladies First is written by Katie Silberman (Booksmart), Natalie Krinsky (The Broken Hearts Gallery), and Cinco Paul (Schmigadoon!), produced by, under her Netflix partnership, 3Dot Productions’ Liza Chasin (Lonely Plane).
Baron Cohen can be seen next in Alfonso Cuarón’s mind-blowing Apple+ thriller series Disclaimer (trailer) premiering this week on the streamer. Pike most recently gave a critically acclaimed performance as the rich matriarch in Prime Video’s Saltburn (2023).
There is no other news regarding production or release dates for Ladies First.
Less TV shows have led to less jobs in LA. That’s less major news than the visceral experience many in our industry have felt in the last few years. Now FilmLA has a study that breaks down the numbers of how many shows are being released and how it impacts the LA Market:
TV Releases 2022 → 2023
Total: 447 → 365 shows
↓18.3%
Filmed in LA: 136 → 105 shows
↓22.8%
Streaming Releases 2022 → 2023
Total: 238 → 203 shows
↓14.7%
Filmed in LA: 68 → 49 shows
↓27.9%
Theatric Release Movies 2022 → 2023
Total: 160 → 199 movies
↑ 24.4%
Filmed in LA: 23 → 21 movies
↓8.7%
Across the board less projects are being filmed in LA, constricting faster than the rest of the industry. Things look more sunny for NY, where the number of US Scripted Streaming TV series being filmed there is going up 30.8%, and Scripted TV is going up 7.7%. In those same categories Ontario is seeing ↑25% and ↑29.4%, respectively.
Film LA President stated:
“More support for California’s film industry, including and a vast expansion of the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program, is required in order to increase the rate of industry investment in our state.”
Get the full FilmLA charts here.
Millennium (Production Company: Expendables 1-4) gets a red card. The WGA issued the following do not work statement:
“The Guild has had to bring a significant number of claims against Millennium over the years for the company’s failure to pay writers initial compensation and residuals, as well as failure to pay writers within the timeframe established in the MBA [Minimum Basic Agreement].”
The statement continued:
“The Guild has determined that Millennium is not financially responsible and requires the posting of an adequate bond before it can become signatory. Millennium has, to date, refused to do so.”
We’ve heard a number of instances of these guild agreements not being followed. It seems it's becoming common practice in the industry to skirt such rules for both writers and actors. If anyone has actually been paid for an audition yet, drop me a line.
Tidbits:
Your daily list of streaming Renewals/Cancellations:
Renewal
Amazon’s Reacher - Season 4
Cancel
Starz’s The Serpent Queen - Season 3
The silver lining for The Serpant Queen is that the actors are getting paid for the season 3 episodes anyway, and a spinoff show with Minnie Driver is in the works.
After over a decade of business together, production company Color Force has renewed its overall deal with FX through 2027, moving forward with Checka Propper as the new Head of Television. The studio, founded by Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson, is most famously behind American Sports Story, Pose, and other hit FX shows, first teaming up with the Disney-owned network back in 2012 for American Crime Story: The People v O. J. Simpson. Propper previously worked at David E. Kelley Productions with credits including Margo's Got Money Troubles and Peacock’s The Calling. This news comes shortly after Color Force struck a first look deal for feature films with Sony Pictures Television.
TV actor Daniel Dae Kim, along with his production company, 3AD, has signed off on a first-look deal with 20th Television to develop and EP comedies, dramas, and limited series across Disney Entertainment Television platforms like ABC, Hulu, and Disney+. Kim has deep ties to Disney with his breakthrough role in the widely successful long-running ABC drama Lost (2004, touching reunion scene), produced by then-ABC Studios, which was recently turned into 20th Television. The Good Doctor actor can be seen now on Broadway starring in David Henry’s Yellow Face at the Roundabout Theater.
Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to Survive, a French survival thriller starring Emilie Dequenne. Directed by Frédéric Jardin, the film follows a family stranded after an extinction level event on Earth. It will be released in theaters and on VOD in January.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
So everyone has got to be pretty hyped that Eddie Redmayne (Best Actor: The Theory of Everything) is starring in Peackock’s The Day of the Jackal, playing a role very similar to Michael Fassbender in Fincher’s The Killer. Although Redmayne seems to be much more chameleonic.
I’m actually more hyped about the person who’s been tasked to eliminate him, Lashana Lynch. Because every bad bad guy needs an equal and opposite force of good. And Lynch is a tidal force in the Jackal trailer with a deep mania to hunt Redmayne.
If you recognize Lynch, there’s a fair chance you saw her in the last Bond film, No Time to Die. She plays 007… and if you missed the film (or actively walked out, which I should have done after the first half), that’ll make slightly more sense. But aside from the conflated scripting, she architects her 007 character to a T. First, playing it easy breazy picking up Bond on a motorcycle after some car trouble before flipping on her snide killer instinct (Clip). Or if you’re not going to sit through a 3-minute clip, here’s her announcing to Daniel Craig that she’s 007 (cued up clip).
Peackock’s The Day of the Jackal streams November 14th.
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Paramount+’s The Associate is lining up a killer cast. Here’s the list of actors in talks for the Guy Ritchie-directed series. And because they’re out for a Ritchie series, we’ve included their relevant resume:
Tom Hardy
Top Kill: Bane airplane scene (clip)
Helen Mirren
Top Kill: Reds Mirren with a machine gun (clip)
Pierce Brosnan
Top Kill: Jonathan Pryce’s Elliot Carver Tomorrow Never Dies (Clip)
There’s no word on the plot, although this was previously said to be a Ray Donovan spinoff.
Mickey Rourke stars in The Roaring Game, a sports comedy directed by Tom DeNucci centered around Olympic curling. He joins a cast that includes Rob Gronkowski, William Forsythe, and Vanessa Angel. The film centers on Rickey (Gronk), a high school janitor who forms a curling team of misfits in a comedic quest to win back his girlfriend and compete for a gold medal. The Roaring Game is surprisingly an adaptation of the book of the same name. We don't yet know Rourke's role, but drawing into his previous Oscar-nominated role in The Wrestler, he brings some serious star power even at the age of 72:
The Wrestler (2008)
While at first glance, Curling does not seem like the most exciting sport, we should all give Roaring Game a chance, hell we already have a movie about pickleball in the works; what's another sports comedy about a sport going to hurt? The film is set to release around the 2026 Winter Olympics, and will be rolling out a commercial tie-in with the event.
Tidbits:
Meet the Lanterns: A few weeks, we got confirmation that Kyle Chandler would be taking on the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, acting as sort of mentor to another younger Lantern named John Stewart. We now know who will play his younger mentee, the Green Lantern John Stewart, will be played by Aaron Pierre (Rebel Ridge). This younger Lantern will most likely be the one who sticks around and, in the future, (MASSIVE SPOILER AHEAD) takes a seat on the Justice League Council, so this is a big role with multiple movies down the line. Kyle Chandler, for what it is worth, does not have a multi-film deal.
Netflix crime thriller, RIP, headlined by Hollywood’s favorite duo Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, adds Catalina Sandino Moreno (Silent Night) and Néstor Carbonell (Shogun) to its high-profile cast. The Miami set action feature will also see The Flash’s Sasha Calle and triple threat talent Teyana Taylor (A Thousand and One) who were previously announced. The film is directed by Joe Carnahan (writer/director: Smokin Aces, writer: Bad Boys for Life (2020).
Production for RIP is underway.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
A24 is getting steamy acquiring the rights to Pillion, a love story and feature debut from BAFTA-nominated writer/director Harry Lighton (Wren Boys) and Element Pictures. Succession’s Alexander Skarsgård and The Queen’s Gambit Harry Melling are attached as the film’s leading men.
Official Synopsis:
Pillion follows Colin (Melling), a weedy wallflower letting life pass him by. That is until Ray (Skarsgård), the impossibly handsome leader of a motorbike club, takes him on as his submissive. Ray uproots Colin from his dreary suburban life, introducing him to a community of kinky, queer bikers, and taking all sorts of virginities along the way. But as Colin steps deeper into Ray’s world of rules and mysteries, he begins to question whether the life of a 24/7 submissive is for him. Has he found his calling, or simply swapped one form of suffocation for another?
The British filmmaker first gained recognition for his debut short film Sunday Morning Coming Down which was acclaimed worldwide through the festival circuits in 2017.
The screenplay for Pillion was made in part with BBC Film based on Box Hill (2005), a Nobel Prize winning sizzling and shocking romance novel by Adam Mars-Jones.
Pillion is currently in post-production, with filming wrapped this past summer.
I’m pretty jazzed to see All We Can Imagine as Light. The film took the Grand Prix (2nd place) at Cannes and is a deep examination of how romantic relationships are fated and emotionally fatal, all brought through a European style of filmmaking by an Indian filmmaker.
In fact, the director Payal Kapadia wrote the film during her residence at Cannes, stating:
“The script for All We Imagine as Light was still very fragile when I applied to La Résidence. Having the time and resources to write it in the company of other wonderful screenwriters and directors offered me the ideal work environment.”
She continued:
“Coming from India, a country where there's a real lack of distribution for independent films, being in Paris was also a real pleasure as a cinephile!”
Soak in this trailer. If you need more reasons to watch, the film was an official selection at:
TIFF
Telluride
NYFF
BFI
It was the first Indian film to compete at Cannes in 30 years. Janus Films will release on November 15th.
Annapurna is still kicking with a new TV series Who Is Maud Dixon?
Here’s the talent stack:
Showrunner, EP, Developer: Boo Killebrew (Producer: FX’s Mrs. America, co-EP: Apple’s Lessons In Chemistry)
Production Company: Annapurna
Megan Ellison is listed as EP
Production Company: Brillstein Creative Partners
Synopsis:
Florence Darrow has always felt she was destined for greatness, but after a disastrous affair with her married boss, she starts to doubt herself. All that changes when she sets off for Morocco with her new boss, the celebrated but reclusive author Maud Dixon. Amidst the colorful streets of Marrakesh and the wind-swept beaches of the coast, Florence begins to feel she’s leading the sort of interesting, cosmopolitan life she deserves.
But when she wakes up in the hospital after a terrible car accident, with no memory of the previous night—and no sign of Maud—a dangerous idea begins to take form.
Annapurna’s Head of Film and TV stated:
“We immediately fell in love with Alexandra’s twisted protagonist, Florence Darrow, and can’t think of someone more perfect than Boo to bring to the screen this exploration of female ambition and obsession.”
No word on the network or production start date.
Tidbits:
Well Go USA (The Last Stop In Yuma County) has just picked up SXSW official selection Cold Wallet.
Synopsis:
After losing everything in a cryptocurrency scam, a ragtag team of vigilante Redditors attempt to kidnap the kingpin who cheated them But when the home invasion takes a turn for the worst, they become victims in a sadistic game.
The director Cutter Hodierne won the Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance in 2014 for his film Fishing Without Nets.
The film will be released theatrically (yay!) in early 2025.
Anthony Hemingway (Genius: Aretha) has joined Ryan Murphy’s Hulu legal drama All’s Fair as director and executive producer. This marks their first collaboration since The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story. The cast stars Kim Kardashian and includes Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash, and Glenn Close.
Production is scheduled to begin in late 2024.
Max’s Breath of Fire cements the streamer’s obsession with cults. This docu-series takes us into a sadistic celebrity yoga cult (probably not as evil as NXIVM for those who saw HBO’s The Vow). I’m sure this one is wild. Here’s the trailer—Premiering October 23rd.
Aperture Entertainment has optioned Andrew Pyper's sci-fi horror novel William, directed by Justin Dyck. The story features a haunted house where AI is the ghost—claiming to blend Ex Machina and The Amityville Horror. Pyper and Chris Sivertson are currently working on the script.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Netflix had a substantial profit surge in the UK last year, with operating profit soaring by 70% to £53.7 million and revenue increasing by 8% to £1.7 billion. Subscriber numbers grew by 7%, doubling the previous year's growth rate. The only speed bump was that the company's tax bill doubled to £14.2 million.
British lawmaker Dame Margaret Hodge, who previously accused the company of a "superhighway robbery," stated:
"This may satisfy those who had pressured Netflix several years back to start declaring its true UK revenue."
Continuing its UK expansion, Netflix has released hits like the final seasons of The Crown and Top Boy, as well as the Beckham documentary.
Screen Australia has announced over $8.1 million in production funding for 15 projects spanning feature film, television, and online content.
Our favorite film they’re supporting is a psychological horror, Saccharine.
Here’s the official synopsis:
A lovelorn medical student becomes terrorised by a hungry ghost after taking part in an obscure weight-loss craze: eating human ashes.
Natalie Erika James is the writer/director/producer. Saccharine has the perfect international sales agent with XYZ Films (The Artifice Girl). This is their meat and potatoes.
Full list of supported projects here.
Pinewood Studios is launching a production hub to support indie UK filmmakers taking advantage of the new Independent Film Tax Credit (IFTC). Opening next year, the hub will offer facilities tailored for lower-budget and independent films. David Conway, CEO of Pinewood Group, said the initiative aims to:
"Boost creativity and attract further investment into the UK."
Under the IFTC, first-time productions with budgets up to £15 million can receive a 53% relief on qualifying expenditure. That’s a lot of dough!
ON THIS DAY
1963. From Russia With Love premieres in London.
See you Friday.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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