Paramount’s Bond, Lionsgate’s Horror, and A24’s Harold and Maude.

Let’s go!

If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.

THE INDUSTRY TLDR

• Paramount wants 12 states to post a $1.88bn bond in its WBD antitrust fight.

• Jon Stewart and Paramount are discussing a Daily Show renewal.

• David F. Sandberg will direct Lionsgate horror film Mommy’s Home.

• Katie Martin Kelley joins Netflix as VP of Film Communications.

• Obituary: Hayden Panettiere.

• Whitney Peak joins Universal’s Miami Vice ’85.

• Pierce Brosnan boards Netflix’s Extraction 3.

• Diane Kruger and Tim Roth join Netflix’s Nazi-hunter drama Project K.

• Hollywood’s MPA and ByteDance strike an AI copyright deal.

• Ramy Youssef makes feature directing debut with A24’s Martha & Muhammad.

• Amy Schumer stars in Best Divorce Ever. She will also produce.

• Greenwich acquires Cannes Competition title Nagi Notes.

THE INDUSTRY NEWS

Larry Ellison (net worth: $200bn) is asking the 12 states + WGA suing over his PSKY/WBD merger to pick up the $1.88bn tab.

At this point, we all know Paramount will have a $650M/quarter ticking fee, which kicks off October 1st and runs until the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger closes.

Paramount is saying that should be the responsibility of the states. Their reasoning is that the court has delayed their whole process by setting a March trial. Also, Paramount claims it may lose some international regulatory approvals as the deal stretches on.

They want the court to require the plaintiffs to post a bond of at least $1.88bn, which Paramount would collect in full if the states lost their case.

Check out their full legal argument here, which at one point quotes Webster’s Practical Dictionary.

Rob Bonta, the CA A.G. who is leading the charge against PSKY, rebutted:

“Bottom line: Paramount went into this process with eyes wide open… They are lying in a bed of their own making, and once again, trying to blackmail us to get us to back down.”

On a separate note, if Paramount can’t have John Stewart, the name of the backup Green Lantern superhero in HBO’s newly launched Lanterns series, they’ll have to settle for the real Jon Stewart. Jon’s contract for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show is set to expire at the end of December, and Paramount wants to renew.

Tidbits:

David F. Sandberg (Dir: Until Dawn) is set to direct a Lionsgate horror film, Mommy’s Home. The film follows a young dad whose family life becomes unhinged when his cryogenically frozen mom is released and sent to live with him. Until Dawn got mixed reviews from the original fans of the game, focusing too much on expanding the universe and trying to innovate the structure of the game rather than respect it. Sandberg was always better with original material, such as his hit horror film Lights Out (2016), so we’re hoping to see more of his originality in this new film.

Mini Tidbits:

Katie Martin Kelley is jumping from Warner Bros. to Netflix. She will serve as VP of Communications, Film, under film chief Dan Lin. She’s got a good pedigree, having worked on Women Talking, No Time to Die, and Licorice Pizza at MGM.

Blake Levin joins Independent Artist Group as Head of Media Finance & Sales. Levin will work with filmmakers and producers to structure financing and distribution for IAG projects.

Peacock has launched a beta for a new membership program that will offer subscribers rewards when they watch NBCUniversal’s content. A randomly selected group of Peacock Premium members will receive benefits from select partners.

Nick Reiner’s hearing to determine whether he can access $1.5M in trust money left by his parents, who he is accused of killing, is set for Oct. 23rd.

Renewal:

HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry (for S2)

Trailers:

FX’s The Drop: A Snowfall Saga

• Trailer

• Cast/Characters: Wanda Bell (Gail Bean) and Leon Simmons (Isaiah John)

• Release: Sept 18

Netflix’s The Diplomat S4

• Trailer

• Release: Oct 15

Netflix’s A Different World

• Follow-up series to NBC’s 1987–1993 sitcom (a Cosby Show spinoff)

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 24

Terrestrial

• Dir: Steve Pink (Hot Tub Time Machine)

• Cast: Jermaine Fowler (Ricky Stanicky)

• Trailer

• Release: Oct 16

NBC’s The Traitors: New Blood

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 17

Kino Lorber’s My Brother’s Wedding

• Dir: Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep)

• Original release: 1983

• Restoration trailer

• 4K release: Sept 18th

The Last Photograph

• Dir: Zack Snyder

• Teaser trailer

BBC’s Vigil (S3)

• Trailer

• BBC iPlayer and BBC One release: Aug 30

Prime India’s Clean Up Company series

• Trailer

• Release: Aug 21

A Bit of Light

• Premiere: Venice, in Competition

• Dir: Ali Asgari (2 years in a row he’s had films in competition)

• Clip

First look:

Warner Bros.’ The Batman Part II

• Star: Robert Pattinson

• Batmobile first look

Prime’s The Terminal List S2

• Star: Chris Pratt

• First look

• Release: Oct 21

Black Sunflowers

• Ukrainian doc

• EP: Sean Penn

• Premiere: TIFF

• First look photos

Release dates:

Marvel’s Ghost Rider

• Dir: Shawn Levy

• Star: Ryan Gosling

• Release: July 28, 2028

Prime India’s Babita Singh Reporting

• Release: Aug 28

THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

From child stardom to TV regular, actress Hayden Panettiere has died at just 36.

The Nashville actress began her career as a baby with some pretty notable early credits, including a recurring role on ABC’s daytime soap One Life to Live when she was four, a scene-stealing turn as the little girl in the football drama Remember the Titans (2000, clip), and voicing the adorable Princess Dot in the Pixar classic A Bug’s Life (1998, clip).

Her real breakout came as Claire Bennet, a cheerleader with regenerative powers, on NBC’s Heroes (2006-10), a role that solidified her as one of that era’s most recognizable young stars. Not long after, she starred as the ambitious emerging country star Juliette Barnes on all six seasons of ABC/CMT’s Nashville (2012-18), for the first time being able to show off her singing abilities as much as her acting.

Countless famous friends, from Viola Davis to Scream co-stars David Arquette and Emma Roberts, to her Nashville co-lead Connie Britton, have paid tribute, with the latter writing:

“I have no words for this sad song. Just heartbreak.”

An immeasurable loss of great talent that has left us far too soon, Panettiere will be remembered by the generations of audiences that grew up with her on their television screens.

Tidbits:

Universal’s Miami Vice ’85 is adding Whitney Peak (Gossip Girl reboot) to its cast, with the actress set to play Michael B. Jordan’s Tubbs’ love interest. The major casting comes just ahead of her highly anticipated prequel, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, in which Peak also plays another love interest, but opposite the devastating Haymitch Abernathy. Also starring Austin Butler and Alden Ehrenreich, Miami Vice ’85 is set to begin production in New York and Miami this November, with more casting news expected shortly.

Move over Idris Elba and Chris Hemsworth. Former 007 Pierce Brosnan joins them in the cast of Netflix’s Extraction 3. Sam Hargrave, the director of the previous two installments, is back to direct. Extraction (135.7M views) and Extraction 2 (129.3M views and counting) are two of Netflix’s most popular English films. They’re non-stop action, which is part of what made the 90s Brosnan Bond films so thrilling. He’ll fit right in. The film is currently shooting in Australia.

Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) and Tim Roth (The Hateful Eight) join Netflix’s Nazi Hunter drama Project K. The film will follow a German-Jewish couple who tracked down former Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie. Tim Roth will play the infamous Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, and Diane Kruger will play Beate Klarsfeld, who pursued Barbie with her husband, Serge. Kruger previously gave a great performance as a German Allied Spy in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, perfectly balancing the character's charismatic facade with the hidden angst beneath it.

Mini Tidbits:

After a scene-stealing performance in Hulu’s English Teacher, Stephanie Koenig has joined Apple TV’s Platonic in a recurring role for its third season. In her next TV comedy spot, Koenig will play a new lawyer at Charlie’s (played by Luke Macfarlane) law firm. The series was renewed for a third season almost a year ago with no word on a release date.

Paramount+’s Clueless series hopes to get the original cast back together. Alicia Silverstone is already back to reprise her iconic role. But the studio is also looking at getting Paul Rudd back as well, although he is not attached. Filming in LA in 2027.

TECH SECTION

Something Hollywood and ByteDance can agree on? The Motion Picture Association and Seedance 2.0’s parent company, ByteDance (owner: TikTok), struck a deal to protect film and TV IP across its AI video and image models.

This comes months after the MPA sent a cease-and-desist letter following the viral Brad Pitt vs. Tom Cruise vids that accused ByteDance of stealing IP.

INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT

It’s been a long time coming. Comedian and actor Ramy Youssef (Poor Things) is making his directorial debut with feature comedy Martha & Muhammad.

For A24, Youssef will star as a young Muslim man who begins a relationship with a white, freshly widowed older woman played by the remarkable Sharon Stone.

From a script he wrote, the film will confront topics like class, religion, immigration, and age gaps, not far off from his painfully truthful semi-autobiographical dramedy series Ramy (2019-22) also from A24.

With an extensive background in producing, Youssef will finally sit in the director’s chair this fall when Martha & Muhammad begins production.

Amy Schumer will star in and produce Break-Up Comedy: Best Divorce Ever.

The film follows Clarissa (Schumer) and Franklin, who decide to divorce after 20 years of marriage. They throw an “Untying the Knot” party to show how they are pulling off an amicable divorce, only to have friends, dates, and strangers turn it into chaos.

The film will be written and directed by Sean Mullin (Amira & Sam).

Mini Tidbits:

Greenwich Entertainment picks up North American rights to Cannes Competition title Nagi Notes, the newest feature from Cannes award-winning director Koji Fukada (Love on Trial). Clip. Releasing in the US in early 2027.

Cineverse (Dist: Terrifier 3) takes the domestic rights to Eugene the Marine starring Scott Glenn (The White Lotus) and Jim Gaffigan. The film follows a former Marine who is threatened with being kicked out of his home by his hostile son (Jeremy Bobb).

ON THIS DAY

1936. Robert Redford is born in Santa Monica, California.

Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.

Editor: Gabriel Miller.

Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram

Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co

There were casting updates that brought a slew of talented actors into The Walt Disney Company fold.

We had 13 major updates for Disney films, including not just some interesting sequel updates for Frozen 3 and Zootopia 3, but also Bluey, a massive animation property finally getting a theatrical film. And Kieran Culkin and Jodie Foster are cast in new projects.

Pixar had three significant updates, which included a couple of sequel announcements and, most interestingly, a new original film, Ghost Market.

3 major Marvel announcements were made, including a casting reveal of the long-awaited X-Men film. Plus, we got a first look at Doctor Doom’s full powers.

2 Star Wars updates were announced, including updates on Ryan Gosling’s Star Wars: Starfighter. And Anakin Skywalker makes a glorious return in Ahsoka S2.

Let’s go!

PIXAR’S GHOST

You know there’s been a massive paradigm shift when even Pixar is making a horror film.

Their newly announced Ghost Market follows a teenage influencer from Chicago who goes on vacation in Hawaii, where he stumbles into a supernatural ramen bazaar where the living and dead mingle.

Although it’s listed as a family comedy, the trailer does invoke horror tropes, most notably the sideways video camera that gets left recording when the main character drops it and runs away. Even though the teaser emphasizes this horror won’t leave you with nightmares, it is a shock to see Pixar play in this space.

Even though their latest movie, Toy Story 5, crested $1.1bn at the box office, their highest-earning Toy Story film, not including inflation, their previous two original films have altogether been financial failures, with Hoppers making $389.5M WW on a $150M budget and Elio earning $154M WW on a $300M budget.

Given the current trend of horror originals like Backrooms ($393.2M WW) and Obsession ($495.6M) out-earning Hoppers and Elio, it makes sense that Pixar would want to capture this market share.

It’s not the first time there have been elements of horror in a Pixar film.

We can think of the scary-as-hell toy jail in Toy Story 3 that sees Buzz brainwashed by the strawberry-scented teddy bear Lotso and that shark chasing Dory and Marlin in Finding Nemo, but nothing that pushes any of these films into straight horror.

This new film is literally called Ghost Market, and it’s going to be super fun and delightful, and we’re excited to see how Pixar approaches this genre.

Coming in 2028.

For More:

Ghost Market teaser.

DISNEY

Until last year, Frozen 2 was Disney’s highest-grossing non-Pixar animated film with $1.453bn. So of course, we’re getting Frozen 3.

Although previously announced, there were some great updates:

The film will have Elsa (Idina Menzel) venturing off to an Enchanted Forest to learn about her powers, while Anna (Kristen Bell) and Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) have their long-awaited royal wedding.

There’s also a hint at a villain who uses magic like Elsa who crashes the wedding – the first time we will get to see some magic battle action in the Frozen franchise.

First look here. New version of the song Frozen Heart D23 performance here.

Releasing: Nov. 24, 2027

So, of course, the film that unseated Frozen 2 at the box office was Zootopia 2 (2025) with $1.87bn. So Disney just announced Zootopia 3.

The short tease of a feather at the end of Zootopia 2 lets us know that the third installment will deal with birds. Lots of fans did question why there weren’t any characters in Zootopia who could fly, and Zootopia 3 will answer that long-awaited question.

Ke Huy Quan (Gary De’Snake) & Ginnifer Goodwin (Judy Hopps) will reprise their roles.

No word on release date.

When Lilo & Stitch (2025) came out, everyone was floored by the response. It was one of five Disney live-action remakes to pull in over $1bn at the box office. The others were, for all intents and purposes, much more nostalgic IPs (The Lion King (2019), Beauty and the Beast (2017), Aladdin (2019), and Alice in Wonderland (2010)).

So it’s no shock that Disney announced Lilo & Stitch 2.

The sequel will introduce a bit of romance for Stitch with a new intergalactic alien character, Angel, also known as Experiment 624.

Here’s a fun little tease. Releasing May 26, 2028.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Teagan Croft, let down your hair! Disney’s upcoming live-action Tangled movie gets a release date of March 31, 2028.

Australian actress Teagan Croft (HBO Max’s DC’s Titans) plays the lovable and curious Rapunzel. Milo Manheim (Disney’s Zombies) plays the swashbuckling charmer Flynn Rider. Caitríona Balfe was just cast as Queen Arianna.

A popular duo among online fancasts, the pairing not only fits the part with their looks, but both actors can also sing, with Manheim fresh off a Broadway run in Little Shop of Horrors and no stranger to Disney musicals (clip). Notably, neither is one of the A-list names people were predicting (and dreading), a refreshing choice for a project of this scale and one that feels primed to turn both into breakout stars, as Disney live-action adaptations so often do.

The original 2010 animated take on everyone’s favorite tower dweller grossed $591M worldwide.

Disney has big wins with live-action adaptations when they’re not a 1:1 remake. That’s what tanked Moana (2026). Let’s hope Tangled does better!

The Long-Lost Cousin of Mickey Mouse: Jon Favreau’s new hybrid 2D hand-drawn animation/live-action series for Disney+ centered on Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is releasing in Feb 2027. The cast includes Albert Brooks, Amy Sedaris, and Steve Martin.

Created by Walt himself in 1927, Oswald was then lost to Universal in 1928. Disney needed a mascot, leading to the creation of Mickey Mouse. Disney reacquired Oswald in 2006, and the character finally hit the public domain in 2023.

Favreau is writing and producing the project under Walt Disney Studios, merging his expertise in live-action filmmaking and animation. This poor guy has been homed and rehomed so many times; hopefully this leads to something long-lasting. Welcome back home, Oswald.

Here's a first look at him in all his glory.

Tidbits:

The reunion is on. Both Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino, nearly 30 years after the release of their ‘90s cult hit film Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997), are back for a legacyquel, Romy & Michele 2. The comedy saw Sorvino and Kudrow as a pair of unaccomplished 29-year-olds who decide to fabricate successful careers in order to impress their former classmates at their 10th anniversary high school reunion. Tim Federle (creator: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series) will direct for 20th Century Studios. The original screenwriter, Robin Schiff (showrunner: Emily in Paris), is returning. Here’s their fun video of the pair from D23. Releasing in 2027.

Disney is still making original films. Hexed will follow a quirky teen (Hailee Steinfeld) and her overbearing mom as they discover her weirdness is actually a latent magical ability – sounds similar to 2022’s Turning Red, which also showcased a controlling mother and a child with powers. This is a formula Disney knows how to do. Walton Goggins has also been cast as a detachable-headed, goofy three-eyed green cat who acts as a companion. Jodie Foster voices the villainous Witch Queen Celeste. Release: Nov 25, 2026

Mini Tidbits:

From Jerry Bruckheimer’s lips: Johnny Depp is in talks to reprise his role as the swashbuckling Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean 6. A script is in the works.

From the top of the Nielsen charts to the big screen. Bluey, the beloved animated dog with limitless energy, is getting a movie: The Bluey Movie. That’s no surprise, as Disney+’s Bluey show racked up 22.8bn watch minutes in the first half of 2026. The only show to go higher was Netflix’s Stranger Things. Releasing August 6, 2027. Trailer.

Kieran Culkin voices the lead character in Disney’s new animated film Clay. The film will turn the cliché of a “Disney Mentor” on its head, with Culkin as a sleazy, irresponsible mentor who runs away from his student… who is made of clay. Release date: Nov 2028.

The Imagineering Story S2. This documentary follows the Disney-branded “Imagineers”, who are responsible for creating the Disney theme park experiences and how their research ushered in numerous technical innovations. Release Date: 2028

Percy Jackson & the Olympians S3. Known to fans as the first shift to a darker, more mature tone in the series, The Titan’s Curse will showcase Percy Jackson as he deals with real dangers and the themes of grief for the first time. Release date: November 20th. Trailer.

Disney+ has announced a new anime series, Kingdom Hearts, based on the popular video game series.

PIXAR

Two sequel updates:

Incredibles 3.

Synopsis:

Set weeks after the previous film, Violet and Dash seek independence from their parents while Jack-Jack’s powers spiral out of control. The family must unite to face a supervillain with abilities surpassing them all.

Pete Docter shared:

“They will face off against a supervillain more powerful than the entire family.”

Peter Sohn is directing Incredibles 3, with Brad Bird writing and producing. Bird, who directed the first two films, had to step back due to commitments on Ray Gunn with Skydance.

First look photo above. Release date: June 16, 2028

Coco 2

Synopsis:

Set a few years after the first film. The story follows the lead character, Miguel, now a teenager. Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt) is back for revenge, sending Miguel on an adventure back to the Land of the Dead.

Releasing November 2029. First look.

MARVEL

The biggest announcement of D23 was Marvel’s X-Men. The cast has been set.

• Sadie Sink as Jean Grey

• Kit Connor as Cyclops

• Christopher Abbott as Professor Charles Xavier

• Samara Weaving as Emma Frost

• Inde Navarrette as Rogue

• Maya Boyd as Storm

• Adam Driver as Mister Sinister

As you can see from the cast, this will probably be one of the youngest live-action versions of X-Men we’ve seen.

Christopher Abbott as Professor X will likely be a mature mentor figure given his age difference from the other X-Men, similar to Patrick Stewart in the original franchise. Abbott will be great for this; he has a calm and collected wisdom that he doesn’t always get to exude, as he mostly plays hyperbolic roles. But just remember when he comes back in the later seasons of HBO’s Girls, he’s calm and collected and controls the room.

The casting for the villain feels terrific, with Adam Driver playing the long-awaited and thoroughly teased Mister Sinister, who will be making his big-screen debut. He has the charisma and intensity for the X-Men arch-nemesis.

Inde Navarrette was expected to play Mystique, but was announced as Rogue. She’ll be perfect for playing the lonely mutant who hides a deep vulnerability behind her confident attitude. The original Rogue was played by Anna Paquin (meeting Wolverine clip). We know that Navarrette will have no problem taking on what every X-Man excels at: moving from friendly to terrifying. I’m still having nightmares about her performance in Obsession.

Hugh Jackman likely won’t be back for Wolverine, so let’s see who they cast.

Releasing May 5, 2028.

Mini Tidbits:

Avengers: Doomsday trailer showcases Doom’s menacing powers, controlling the Sentinels who hunted down mutants to the brink of extinction.

The WandaVision trilogy is coming to an end with VisionQuest. We see Vision trying to get in touch with who he was before being reborn. We also get to see a human version of the supervillain Ultron (James Spader), marking his return to the live-action series since 2015. Cast: Paul Bettany, James Spader, Ruaridh Mollica. Release: Oct 14

STAR WARS

Star Wars: Starfighter

Release Date: May 28, 2027
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Flynn Gray, Matt Smith

Taking place almost five years after the events of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: Starfighter is going to be the furthest point in the main Star Wars film timeline. This will be original, uncharted territory for everyone. Director Shawn Levy knows how to make an entertaining buddy movie – let’s see if it can bring the Force back to the franchise’s film side, which has received mixed reviews from the fans.

Ahsoka S2

Release Date: Jan 20, 2027
Cast: Rosario Dawson, Hayden Christensen

Ahsoka S2 features Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. From the trailer, we can see that the series will show a younger Ahsoka training with Anakin as well as Grand Admiral Thrawn launching a full-scale attack on the Rebel Alliance.

Trailer.

THE SIMPSONS

Simpsons 2 movie? D’oh, yeah! The New Simpsons Movie, a sequel to The Simpsons Movie (2007), is set for release on September 3rd, 2027. The first film made $536.4M on a $75M budget and was the third-highest-grossing animated film that year. The show is heading into its 38th season.

Written by Tony Jaeyeong Jeong and Gabriel Miller.

Editor: Gabriel Miller.

Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram

Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co

Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:

HBO Max’s The Pitt, Amazon MGM’s Squish, and a Rose.

Let’s go!

If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.

HBO Max’s The Pitt season 2 once again taps into the chaos of overworked healthcare professionals at a Pittsburgh hospital.

This season navigates through their personal crises, workplace politics, and an existential threat to the hospital itself. All the while, it asks a sinister question: what happens when the leaders in charge of saving lives become untrustworthy?

The cast is led by the righteous but tormented Noah Wyle, who presses through this “deli of death.”

Click here for more info

THE INDUSTRY TLDR

• Paramount clears final non-US hurdle for the WBD merger.

• Riley Keough will lead HBO gambling drama Advantage Player.

• Amazon MGM is developing a four-quadrant Squishmallows movie.

• Netflix orders supernatural YA mystery-romance series Sid & Zoey.

• Netflix expands its YA slate with Sunshine Girls and Minimum Wage.

• J. Smith-Cameron joins 1980s-set indie romance In Our Own Sweet Way.

• Thora Birch boards The Last Seder.

• Florin Şerban’s You Don’t Belong Here wins Locarno’s Golden Leopard.

• Eskil Vogt (Wri: Sentimental Value) will direct his third feature.

• Zach Braff drama Clean Hands heads to TIFF market.

• Austria selects Sandra Hüller’s Rose for the International Feature Oscar.

Friday’s highest-voted answer: The Thing (1982), favorite John Carpenter film.
41% agreed.

Noah Wyle (Dr. Robby) is the most problematic of all - click here for more info

THE INDUSTRY NEWS

Paramount has secured Mexico’s approval for its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

It’s a big moment, as PSKY now has approval in every area it needs for the deal to close outside the US. That includes:

• 68 countries (EU, UK, Aus, Can, Brazil, China, etc.)

Of course, even though the US Department of Justice has approved, there’s still the massive 12-state attorney general lawsuit scheduled for March 2, 2027. Details here.

Tidbits:

Nick Reiner, who is indicted for the murder of his parents, Michele and Rob Reiner, is trying to win $586K of the $1.6M in trust money to help him mount a defense. The trustee argues that California’s “slayer statute,” which prevents someone from inheriting from a person they intentionally killed, blocks the payment. A hearing on the dispute is scheduled for today.

Four projects in development:

HBO is landing big with gambling drama pickup, Advantage Player, starring and EP’d by Riley Keough (Under the Bridge). From Media Res (The Morning Show), the project reunites Keough with writer and EP Will Graham, having previously worked together on Prime’s Emmy-nominated musical limited series Daisy Jones & the Six. Based on real-life player Gina Fiore, Advantage Player follows a brilliant misfit (Keough) who discovers her gift for beating the system by scamming casinos at their own game. No word on production dates.

Amazon MGM is trying to create the next big four-quadrant film with the hit toy brand Squishmallows. What the heck is a Squishmallow? It’s a fun little squishy plush toy (website here). Oh, and 600M+ have been sold to kids and adults since 2017. Producer Beau Flynn, whose work includes the live-action Moana, the upcoming Hello Kitty film, and Requiem for a Dream (2000), is on board. Amazon MGM doesn’t have a single film on Nielsen’s top 20 chart for top-streaming movies. So this may level the playing field.

Netflix is developing a supernatural YA series, Sid & Zoey, from Jon Kasdan (Wri: Solo: A Star Wars Story), John Shiban (Wri: Ozark), and Blumhouse Atomic Monster. The eight-episode series will follow a misfit kid from NYC, Sid, who is forced to live with a police chief in rural Mississippi, where he meets a punk-rock girl named Zoey. Together, they investigate the town’s supernatural happenings. Sounds like a fun little Stranger Things variant. Kasdan and Shiban will serve as showrunners.

Netflix is expanding its YA slate with Sunshine Girls from Brat TV’s Rob Fishman and Nuria Anson (A Girl Named Jo). Teenager Olivia’s life is upended when she is forced to move coasts from the Big Apple to sunny California right as she’s starting high school. Sunshine Girls joins another recently announced YA Netflix project, Minimum Wage, a fourteen-episode series about a group of teenagers struggling with service-industry burnout. Both shows will drop on Netflix later this year.

Mini Tidbits:

Sebastian Gibbs is coming back to Netflix. He will serve as the Director, Original Series, including IP and Tentpoles. He’s got a good pedigree, having previously worked at Netflix overseeing Ozark.

A long time coming. Ian Frazier, the writer of the original 1990 New Yorker comic on which Coyote v. Acme is based, will finally see his film released in a couple of weeks. Scott Rudin originally optioned his comic in the 90s, but it lapsed in 2004.

The Golden Globe Foundation has fired CEO Gregory Goeckner amid a lawsuit from former HFPA members challenging the Globes’ takeover. Along with the foundation, Goeckner is being accused of transferring $4M in HFPA funds to the foundation to move along their dissolution. No word on a replacement.

A four-decade Paramount Pictures veteran, Kathie Hoops, has died at 66 after a battle with cancer. The financial executive spent most of her tenure at Paramount as the VP of residuals.

Legendary Field of Dreams editor Ian Crafford has died of cancer at 82. Crafford left school at just 17 to join Britain’s Elstree Studios, launching a prolific career from working on sound for Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) to editing James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983) and John Boorman’s Hope and Glory (1987).

Renewals:

HBO Max’s Stuart Fails to Save the Universe (for S2)

MTV’s RuPaul’s Drag Race (for S19)
MTV’s RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked (for S18)
Paramount+’s RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars (for S12)
Paramount+’s RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars: Untucked (for S9)

Cancellations:

Hulu’s Deli Boys (canceled after S2)

Trailers:

Vertical’s Come With Me (just acquired)

• Trailer

• Cast: Theo Rossi, Ron Perlman

• Release: Sept 4

Orchid Tree Media’s Take Off

• Heartwarming Chinese film about a factory worker who decides to do something with his life and, against all societal pressure, build a jet pack

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 17

And here’s a fun little look at the new Beatles crossing Abbey Road in Sam Mendes’ new four-film event.

Noah Wyle (Dr. Robby) is the most problematic of all - click here for more info

THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

Succession’s J. Smith-Cameron has joined the cast of indie romance drama In Our Own Sweet Way, an '80s-set period film about two discordant neighbors who find an unsettling harmony.

After just finishing a recurring spot on HBO’s comedy Hacks, Smith-Cameron will be taking a darker, deeper detour, describing the new script as “utterly original and imaginative from the moment I started reading it.”

She stars opposite Yellowstone’s Jefferson White in the film, which just wrapped production.

Tidbits:

BAFTA nominee Thora Birch (American Beauty) is back in a family drama, joining the cast of The Last Seder, a feature indie dramedy alongside Barbara Hershey (Black Swan) and Morgan Saylor (Homeland). The film is set during one hilarious and heartbreaking night: the Price family’s last Passover Seder, as each member reaches the next chapter in their own life. Production has just wrapped in LA.

Final Destination: Bloodlines star Kaitlyn Santa Juana joins a band! She stars in The Jam Van, a new indie film that follows a dysfunctional pop-punk band on an awkward road trip to a show that could save or sink them. Santa Juana brought dogged skepticism and wonderful determination that really made Bloodlines feel special.

Keyla Monterroso Mejia is making the TV comedy rounds. Set to join S2 of ABC’s Scrubs, Mejia has delivered hilarious recurring moments on fellow ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary as an underqualified teacher’s aide and as a high-strung assistant on Apple’s The Studio. Now Mejia will take her comedy to the hospital as a sassy surgical nurse named Mimi.

We’re sad to share that Hayden Panettiere (Heroes, Scream 4) has passed away at 36. We’ll have more details tomorrow on the 2x Golden Globe nominee.

Noah Wyle (Dr. Robby) is the most problematic of all - click here for more info

FESTIVALS AND DOCS

The 79th Locarno Film Festival has officially crowned its winners.

Here’s the rundown:

Golden Leopard (top prize)

You Don’t Belong Here

• Dir/Wri/Edi: Florin Şerban (If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle)

Synopsis:

Follows a physician who is crushed when police suspect his teenage son of murdering an old Romani man, then discovers his son has a secret life of vandalizing cars with masked vigilantes.

Special Jury Prize:

The Riverbank (A Margem do Rio)

• Dir: Matheus Farias (editor The Secret Agent), Enock Carvalho (Unbelievable)

Synopsis:

In Recife, a city of rivers and mangroves, Izaquiel seeks secret encounters in the mangroves at night. His world is turned upside down when he meets Jeremias, a magnetic fisherman who changes everything.

Best Direction / Best Performance

Nowhere to Lay My Eyes

• Dir/Wri/Edi: Hong Sang-soo (Right Now, Wrong Then)

• Cast: Kim Minhee

Synopsis:

Follows Sanghee as she visits her mother on Jeju Island after 10 years, reuniting with her brother and meeting her stepfather and his daughter while navigating family dynamics and personal pursuits.

Full list of winners here.

Mini Tidbits:

Genre cinema gets its own spotlight at TIFF: The Market this September, as Fantasia’s Frontières unveils seven in-development projects for its inaugural showcase. Here are the standouts.

Distributor and international sales agency Lightdox (Venice’s Do You Love Me) has snagged the rights to Venice sidebar premiering Auber 89, an archival footage documentary from Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Schillaci (Bosco Grande). The doc follows an Algerian actor who, after losing his memory, confronts his childhood through found footage of his youth. Trailer

INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Joachim Trier’s go-to writer Eskil Vogt is making his return to the director’s chair for his third feature, Untitled.

A two-time Oscar nominee for co-writing Trier’s Sentimental Value (2025) and The Worst Person in the World (2021), Vogt just received backing in a $1M production grant from the Norwegian Film Institute for his newest feature.

Following his directorial debut, the Sundance premiere of Blind (2014), and his Cannes premiere of the supernatural horror The Innocents (2021), little is known about Untitled beyond that it is a thriller about “art, power and the blurred boundaries between memory and truth.”

Vogt will write and direct, with Sentimental Value producer Mer Film attached.

Mini Tidbits:

Following its Tribeca premiere, Myriad Pictures (Bob Trevino Likes It) will be launching Clean Hands, the Zach Braff-led true-life drama, for international sales at the TIFF market. The film sees Braff as a police officer whose morals are questioned when his own daughter gets caught up in an illegal cycle. Vertical has US rights.

Oscar-nominated director Mark Rydell, best known for 1980’s On Golden Pond, has died at 97. Starring Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda, sharing the screen with his daughter Jane Fonda, the humorous and heartwarming family drama became the defining film of Rydell’s career. Rydell leaves behind a film that has made generations laugh, cry, and feel a little closer to home (trailer).

Austria picks Rose, starring Sandra Hüller, for its official submission for the Oscars for Best International Film. The film premiered at Berlin and won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance. Synopsis: A soldier in the 17th century arrives at an isolated Protestant village in Germany claiming to be the heir to an abandoned farmstead. Trailer. Austria’s last Oscar win was Amour (2012), which also won the Palme d’Or.

ON THIS DAY

1939. The Wizard of Oz opens at Loew’s Capitol Theatre, NYC.

Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.

Editor: Gabriel Miller.

Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram

Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co

Two standout projects include:

Two Gun Cohen

• Dir: Johnnie To (Election)

• Prod: XYZ Films former int. Acqs head Todd Brown (Timecrimes)

Synopsis:

Con man, swindler, and general gadabout, Morris Cohen is in a bind. Sitting in a jail cell after being caught cheating on cards, Cohen’s luck appears to have run out until a mysterious Chinese man makes him an offer: “Ask no questions, join our service and we will bail you out.”

Fin

• Dir/Wri: Lowell Dean (Die Alone)

• Prod: Lolofilm Productions (Lamb of Love)

Synopsis:

Revolves around three estranged siblings who reunite at their father’s deathbed and learn their wheelchair-bound, catatonic mother is actually a mermaid.

To learn more about TIFF: The Market, click here.

• Warner Bros.’ The End of Oak Street

• Paramount’s PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie

• Trafalgar Releasing’s Katseye: Wild Hearts

• Focus Features’ SIX: The Musical Live!

• Angel Studios’ The Brink of War

• Shloka Entertainments’ Vishwanath & Sons

• Black Bear’s The Rivals of Amziah King

• A24’s The Wrong Girls

• EKKL Entertainment’s Elijah Peel

• Oscilloscope’s Union County

• Watermelon Pictures’ American Doctor

Plus, a full breakdown of the top ten at the box office this weekend.

If you’ve been forwarded this email, click here to sign up: https://theindustry.co/subscribe

Sony’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day took #1 at the box office for the third weekend in a row with $70M domestic. That brings its domestic total to $785.8M. Internationally, it’s earned a total of $1.236bn. This brings its worldwide total to $2.022bn.

As of the current numbers, not including inflation, it is the second-biggest third weekend of all time, only behind:

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

  • $248M opening (vs. Brand New Day’s $360M)

  • $90.2M week 3 (-40%)

  • $742.2M week 3 domestic total (vs. Brand New Day’s $785M)

  • $936M domestic total

  • $2.068bn worldwide

The remarkable thing is Spider-Man: Brand New Day is on track to become the highest-earning film domestically of all time, as it’s already $44M above the previous record holder Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), by its third week.

Worldwide, it’s now one of eight films to cross $2bn at the box office, and it will likely clear $2.5bn.

It’s the second fastest film to make $2bn at the box office (17 days), only behind Avengers: Endgame (2019), which did it in 11 days.

There are now nine live-action Spider-Man films. The previous 8 earned a combined $7.9bn. With the two Spider-Verse films earning a combined $1.085bn, that brings Spider-Man films, not including Venom, up to $11bn.

That’s the highest-grossing superhero film at the box office, well above Batman and Superman.

The film had a production budget of $225M and is very profitable.

Here’s the trailer.

Here’s the breakdown of the rest of the top 10:

$23.2M - The Odyssey (Universal)

• $504.7M domestic total

• $1.29bn worldwide

• $250M budget

• RT: 94%

• Week 5

• Trailer

Nolan’s film took a tiny 27% week 5 drop. That makes it the highest-grossing Nolan film of all time. And the second-highest-earning domestically:

• The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

  • $160.9M opening (opened higher than The Odyssey’s $123.5M)

  • $448.2M domestic total

  • $1.085bn worldwide

• The Dark Knight (2008)

  • $158.4M opening (opened higher than The Odyssey’s $123.5M)

  • $471.1M week 5 domestic total

  • $533M domestic total (highest-earning domestically)

  • $1.004bn worldwide

• Oppenheimer (2023)

  • $82.4M opening (vs. The Odyssey’s $123.5M)

  • $330.1M domestic total

  • $975.8M worldwide

This is Nolan’s third film to make over $1bn at the box office. It’s great news for Universal, as The Odyssey is very profitable.

$21M - The End of Oak Street (Warner Bros.)

• $47M worldwide

• $80M budget

• RT: 85%

• Week 1

• Trailer

This is an average opening for a sci-fi monster film. The film stars Anne Hathaway, who has been having a monster year* at the box office, with her two other films opening way higher:

• The Odyssey (2026)

  • $123.5M opening

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026)

  • $76.7M opening

*Her A24 film Mother Mary (2026) flopped, earning a total of $3.1M worldwide.

The other star of the film is Ewan McGregor, who hasn’t starred in a film that was widely released since 2019:

• Doctor Sleep (2019)

  • $14.1M opening

Given McGregor has been out of the picture (although he’s a fantastic actor), and the year Anne Hathaway is having, this is a good opening for an original film.

The End of Oak Street will likely not break even theatrically.

$20.5M - PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie (Paramount)

• $69M worldwide

• $40M budget

• RT: 81%

• Week 1

• Trailer

If you’re not familiar with this series, there have been 10 films, although the majority have only been released internationally (with one clearing $18M).

This is the third PAW Patrol film to be released domestically and internationally. And it had an average opening:

• PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie (2023)

  • $22.8M opening

  • $65.3M domestic total

  • $205.1M worldwide

• PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie (2026)

  • $20.5M opening

• PAW Patrol: The Movie (2021)

  • $13.1M opening

  • $40.1M domestic total

  • $144.3M worldwide

These films are driven by the Canadian TV series, which has been running steadily since 2013. PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie will have no problem recouping as it continues to expand internationally.

$3.6M - Katseye: Wild Hearts (Trafalgar Releasing)

• RT: 89%

• Week 1

• Trailer

This is a music doc about the pop girl group Katseye (Spotify’s #152 band in the world with 36.3M monthly listeners).

Synopsis:

A celebration to the group's new era and the fans who made it possible. Features exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, Eyekons fan videos, and intimate interviews with the members.

This is doing strong business, although Trafalgar has had slightly more success with their previous live concert films this year:

• BTS World Tour 'Arirang' in Busan: Live Viewing (2026)

  • $3.8M opening

  • $9M worldwide

• Twenty One Pilots: More Than We Ever Imagined (2026)

  • $4.3M opening

  • $5.8M worldwide

However, and some people may hate this, Katseye: Wild Hearts beat out:

• Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (2025 re-release, Trafalgar Releasing)

  • $2.6M opening

  • $6.5M worldwide

Of course, it’s nowhere near the top concert films of all time: Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour (2023), which opened at $93.2M, or Taylor Swift | The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, which took #1 at the box office with $33M.

$3M - SIX: The Musical Live! (Focus Features)

• $11.9M worldwide

• RT: 97%

• Week 1

• Trailer

This is an okay opening for a filmed musical. However, it is nowhere near what Bleecker Street pulled off a couple of weeks ago:

• Hadestown: The Musical (Bleecker Street’s event cinema division Crosswalk and LD Entertainment)

  • $9.7M opening

  • $20.6M worldwide total

In this category, the highest-earning filmed musical of all time is still:

• Hamilton (2025)

  • $10.1M opening

  • $16.9M domestic total

  • $20.9M worldwide total

Six: The Musical! has won 2 Tonys and centers on the six wives of Henry VIII, reimagining them as pop stars.

$2.7M - The Brink of War (Angel Studios)

• RT: 71%

• Week 1

• Trailer

This is a low opening for a war film, 61% below the average. It’s also a low opening for an Angel Studios war film:

• Young Washington

  • $19.4M opening

  • $47M worldwide

• Truth & Treason (2025)

  • $2.6M opening

  • $6.2M worldwide

Note that Truth & Treason did not have a single A-list actor in the film. Compare that to The Brink of War, which has a stacked cast of Jeff Daniels and J.K. Simmons.

$2.3M - Toy Story 5 (Pixar)

• $475.5M domestic total

• $1.15bn worldwide

• $275M budget

• RT: 92%

• Week 10

• Trailer

This is now the highest-earning Toy Story film of all time, not including inflation. It beat out the previous two films, which also cracked $1bn at the box office:

• Toy Story 3 (2010)

  • $415M domestic total

  • $1.067bn worldwide

• Toy Story 4 (2019)

  • $434M domestic total

  • $1.073bn worldwide

This comes at a great time for Pixar as they’ve recently undergone significant staff cuts after their last two films underperformed, Hoppers ($389.5M WW on a $150M budget) and Elio ($154M WW on a $300M budget).

$2M - One Night Only (Universal)

• $9.9M domestic total

• $12.1M worldwide

• $25M budget

• RT: 46%

• Week 2

• Trailer

This took a big 64% drop in its second week.

This is the sex is banned except for one night of the year rom-com. So in terms of rom-coms that lean sci-fi starring Callum Turner (as One Night Only does), there’s a great comp in:

• A24’s Eternity (2025)

  • Cast: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner

  • $3.2M opening (vs. One Night Only’s $5.5M)

  • $2.7M week 2 (-14.2% drop)

  • $16.2M domestic total

  • $35.9M worldwide

So by that count, One Night Only is not doing very well. Its 64% drop is over four times higher than Eternity’s week 2 drop of 14.2%.

One Night Only had a small budget, but it will not recoup theatrically.

The film also stars Monica Barbaro, who played Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown.

$1.8M - Vishwanath & Sons (Shloka Entertainments)

• RT: 88%

• Week 1

• Trailer

Synopsis:

Sanjay Vishwanath has devoted decades to excellence as an international shooter. When age, family duties, and an unexpected romance collide with his ambitions, he must confront what truly makes a life worth living.

This is a great opening for a Tamil-language film in the US.

Here are the lowest-grossing films of the week:

$23.9K - Backrooms (A24)

• $197.5M domestic total

• $393.2M worldwide

• $825 /screen average

• Week 12

• Trailer

$6.6K - The Death of Robin Hood (A24)

• $5.35M domestic total

• $6.7M worldwide

• Cast: Hugh Jackman

• $661 /screen average

• Week 9

• Trailer

$2.9K - Sheep in the Box (Neon)

• $191.4K domestic total

• $764.1K worldwide

• Premiere: Cannes

• $127 /screen average

• Week 4

• Trailer

Black Bear’s The Rivals of Amziah King earned $1.03M in its opening weekend. This had a decent per-screen average of $1.6K/screen across 632 theaters. The film stars Matthew McConaughey and Kurt Russell. It opened at SXSW in 2025. Black Bear is still figuring out their US release strategies. So this beat out the per/screen average of their previous Christy, starring Sydney Sweeney, which opened to $1.3M but had a weak $600/screen average across 2184 theaters.

Neon’s The Wrong Girls earned $406.5K in its opening weekend. This had a low per-screen average of $782/screen across 520 theaters. The film stars Kristen Stewart, Alia Shawkat, LaKeith Stanfield, Seth Rogen, and even Cate Blanchett.

EKKL Entertainment’s Elijah Peel earned $250.6K in its opening weekend. This had a low per-screen average of $468/screen across 535 theaters. EKKL is a new faith-based studio. We interviewed the founder here.

Oscilloscope’s Union County earned $68.5K in its opening weekend. This had a very strong per-screen average of $6.8K/screen across 10 theaters. The film stars Will Poulter and premiered at Sundance.

Watermelon Pictures’ American Doctor earned $40.1K in its opening weekend. This had the strongest per-screen average of the week with $40K/screen across 1 theater.

A24’s Tony earned $706K in its second weekend. It expanded to 37 screens and had a massive per-screen average of $19.1K/screen. The film stars Dominic Sessa as Anthony Bourdain. It also stars Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, and Leo Woodall.

Mubi’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma earned $907K in its second weekend. It expanded to 54 screens and had a massive per-screen average of $16.8K/screen. The film premiered at Cannes and stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. Directed by Jane Schoenbrun.

“Will leave you on the edge of your seat.”

- Collider

[WATCH] Chemistry & Collaboration in THE BEAST IN ME

Emmy® Nominated Lead Actress Claire Danes and Lead Actor Matthew Rhys dive into character dynamics, emotional stakes, and the creative process behind bringing this cat-and-mouse thriller to life.

___

“One of the best TV shows of the year.”

- The Wall Street Journal

[WATCH] Behind The Series with Emmy® Nominees Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys

An inside look at the ideas that shaped THE BEAST IN ME from the start. Explore how the Emmy®-nominated writing built layered, morally complex characters.

______

For more on THE BEAST IN ME, visit series.netflixawards.com

Paramount’s Defense, Hulu’s Day, and nothing hurt.

Let’s go!

If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.

THE INDUSTRY TLDR

• Paramount Primal acquires medieval fantasy spec Tower Defense.

• Netflix greenlights a Keiko/Free Willy doc.

• WBD CEO David Zaslav sells $21.7M in stock.

• Hulu picks up Kathryn Newton’s YA romance series Just One Day.

• Spider-Man: Brand New Day becomes the fastest film to $700M domestic.

• Emilia Jones will lead Netflix fertility-center drama The Retrievals.

• Amy Sedaris joins Apple’s Protective Custody.

• Nava Mau boards indie drama Holy Whore.

• NYFF unveils its Currents lineup, including Tala Hadid’s Bardi.

• Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way EPs dolphin-rights doc Freeing Flipper.

• Marc Turtletaub & Oren Moverman’s new film: Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.

• Banijay promotes Matt Creasey to Senior EVP World.

• Turkey and Switzerland select their International Feature Oscar contenders.

THE INDUSTRY NEWS

Paramount is storming the gates! Ok, not of Rob Bonta’s office, but instead Paramount Primal (new genre label) has picked up Tower Defense, a spec script from Evan Daugherty (wri: Divergent, Snow White and the Huntsman).

The script is like a medieval fantasy version of Assault on Precinct 13 (trailer). So expect a fairly harrowing, fantastical film about rival warlocks or knights trying to infiltrate a safe haven. Some of our favorite scenes in cinema, including in Nolan’s The Odyssey, are storming-the-gate scenes (LOTR clip), so this could be quite fun.

Free Willy the doc! Netflix has greenlit a documentary on Keiko, the real orca who played the orca in the heartstring-pulling 1993 film. The untitled film will trace the star attraction’s rise from a Mexico City amusement park to Hollywood’s spotlight, a journey that sparked a worldwide animal rights movement. Netflix also picked up murder doc Liliana’s Invincible Summer and history doc Marcos. Another World Is Possible.

After going on a horror run with Amazon’s The Devil’s Mouth and the Ready or Not sequel, Kathryn Newton’s upcoming YA series Just One Day has landed at Hulu. Previously set up at Amazon, the series adaptation is based on Gayle Forman’s romance trilogy centered on Allyson (Newton), who, during her three-week post-graduation European tour, meets a free-spirited man who changes her life.

Mini Tidbits:

Spidey is breaking records. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now the fastest movie to cross the $700M benchmark in the U.S. box office, doing so in only 13 days. The big question: does it have enough web to be the first film in history to break $1bn domestically?

Season 4 of Ted Lasso returns to Apple TV with a bang, with its season premiere garnering a record-breaking 296.6M viewing minutes. This was the biggest launch in the streamer’s history. The fourth season of this beloved soccer franchise follows Ted as he returns to Richmond to coach a second division women’s football team.

Google TV Freeplay is stepping up in the FAST wars, with a library that now boasts 10,000 on-demand titles and 300 channels. This is becoming a bigger competitor to Fox’s Tubi and Paramount’s Pluto TV. Full details here.

Charter Communications’ $34.5bn acquisition of Cox Communications has been approved by regulators. This will become the nation’s largest cable and broadband provider. The megamerger will take the Cox name and expand cable and internet services nationwide.

Renewal:

PBS’s Hope in the Water (renewed for S2)

Cancellations:

HBO Max’s Cop Drama American Blue pilot (Not going forward, but pilot will shop around for new home)

Disney+’s live-action Power Rangers series

Trailers:

Warner Bros.’ The Devils 4K Re-Release

• Trailer

• Cast: Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed

• Release: Oct 16

This is from Warner Bros.’ newly launched Clockwork label, and in keeping with the name, this trailer shares DNA with Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange original trailer.

Well Go USA Entertainment’s Dear You

• Trailer

• Chinese Box Office: $223M

• Chinese Release: April 30

• U.S. Release: Sept 4

Watermelon Pictures’ Traces of Home

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 18

Hulu’s Chad Powers S2

• Trailer

• Cast: Glen Powell

• Release: Sept 3

Paramount+’s MobLand S2

• Trailer

• Cast: Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan

• Release: Sept 18

FX’s American Horror Story S13

• Trailer

• Cast: Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Angela Bassett

• Release: Sept 24

First look:

Visit Films’ Skintown

• First Look

• Cast: Jack Rowan, Chris Walley

Netflix’s The Altruists

• First Look

• Cast: Julia Garner, Anthony Boyle

Release Date:

Disney+’s Megan and Cupcake Ready for Preschool

• Cast: Megan Baptist

• Release: Fall 2026

THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

Emilia Jones is on a mission. She will star in Netflix’s The Retrievals series from Molly Smith Metzler (wri: Netflix mini-series Sirens).

The new series will follow one woman’s fight against a fertility center that operated on her and almost 100 other women without anesthesia.

Jones loves these types of roles, where she gets swept up in an activist film, but finds bliss in a bunch of side missions that bring out her true calling. We saw it in CODA, and if you were lucky enough to catch her in Lionsgate’s Fairyland (trailer), it’s the same story with the AIDS crisis. She’ll do great in this one.

As a bonus, it’ll look great too. Blue Valentine cinematographer Andrij Parekh is set to shoot and direct the first two episodes.

Kingston Rumi Southwick (Matthew Rhys’s son in Widow’s Bay and Jake Gyllenhaal’s son in Presumed Innocent) joins Amazon MGM’s Egg Baby.

From XYZ Films, comedy director Natalia Anderson (Black-ish) directs this new coming-of-age rom-com starring Ariana Greenblatt.

The story follows an angsty teenager (Greenblatt), this time tasked with co-parenting an egg for her health class alongside the precious quarterback.

Southwick has, right now, developed a wonderful niche for himself: the underdrawn teenager with a lot of pent-up anger and resentment. This is right in his wheelhouse.

Tidbits:

Nava Mau (Baby Reindeer) joins the cast of director Deborah Kampmeier’s (Dir: Virgin) indie film Holy Whore. The film follows a woman named Carmine who moves from being a sex worker and a drug addict to a sex therapist who helps heal others with a similar past. Mau will star as Alex, a dominatrix and a heroin addict who ends up in the same rehab as the young Carmine (Sophia Adler). Mau was one of the strongest parts of Baby Reindeer, providing the show with a grounded and more mature character while everyone else around her is running around in chaos.

Comedy legend Amy Sedaris is going into hiding. She joins Ben Stiller and Benicio Del Toro in Apple TV’s Protective Custody. Mike Judge (Silicon Valley, Office Space) will direct. This comedic show follows a fallen financier facing major fraud allegations who lands in protective custody. I could very clearly see Sedaris’ off-kilter personality blending well with whatever alchemy Stiller, Del Toro, and Judge have brewing.

Casting Tidbits:

• Gayle Rankin (House of the Dragon)

• Neal McDonough

• And Only Murders in the Building, but the building is full of Doctor Whos

All those and more here.

FESTIVALS AND DOCS

The New York Film Festival is beginning to unveil more of its feature lineup for its upcoming 64th edition.

Some standouts from the NYFF’s Currents Centerpiece section:

Bardi (documentary)

• Dir: Tala Hadid

• Headlining film

Synopsis:

Filmmaker and photographer Tala Hadid immersed herself in the rugged, fraternal world of a group of horse-riders in central Morocco, as they take part in an equestrian military ritual that dates to the 16th century.

Heil Jupiter!

• Dir: Carlos Reygadas (NYFF45’s Silent Light)

Synopsis:

Amidst crashing waves and monumental rocks on a distant coast, two young couples open up a realm of shifting realities. Unbeknownst to them, a mysterious entity watches from high above with godlike judgment.

Overt Listening (documentary)

• Dir: Tiffany Sia (A Wet Finger in the Air)

Synopsis:

Hong Kong-born artist Tiffany Sia confronts the Cold War legacy of China in this landscape film shot amidst the serene environs of Taiwan’s Kinmen archipelago, where a major battle took place at the end of the Chinese Civil War.

The festival will also screen a 16mm restoration of the 110-minute, silent film Suicide Note (1976-1984) by critic and avant-garde filmmaker Fred Camper.

To see the full list of titles in the 2026 Currents section, click here.

The NYFF will run from Sept. 25-Oct. 12.

TIFF Market additions:

Freeing Flipper

• E.P: Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way (The Revenant)

• Int. Sales Rep: Dogwoof (The Rescue)

• Dir: Barney Douglas (Warriors)

Synopsis:

The extraordinary story of Richard “Ric” O’Barry, once the world’s highest-paid dolphin trainer, now their most passionate defender, risking his life and liberty to free these remarkable creatures from captivity.

Final Invasion

• Int. Sales Rep: Convoke Media (Kill Shot)

• Dir: Josh Sternfeld (Fortress: Sniper’s Eye)

• Cast: Anthony Michael Hall, Emile Hirsch

Synopsis:

When a mysterious UAP satellite crashes in the New Mexico desert, it unleashes a rapidly mutating extraterrestrial organism that infects all life on Earth, including humans, animals, and the planet’s ecosystems, triggering an extinction-level event.

INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) producer Marc Turtletaub and The Messenger screenwriter Oren Moverman are teaming back up.

They’re making an adaptation of the NY Times bestseller Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.

Turtletaub will direct the film from Moverman’s screenplay.

Book Synopsis:

Travis is Death in the modern world. His job is to offer people comfort in their final hours of life. He’s stoic, gentle, and a little naive. Then Travis meets Dalia, a midwife, and her boisterous eight-year-old daughter. He finds himself wholeheartedly embraced by other people and learns what it means to be truly alive—and what might be irrevocably lost in death.

We like these two exploring life and death. Moverman’s The Messenger was all about the impersonal military machinery through which death is delivered to families. And Turtletaub produced Little Miss Sunshine, one of the best films ever about being yourself and embracing life. So this should be a good pairing.

Their last film together, Borges and Me, just premiered out of competition at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

International Tidbits:

Banijay Rights brings on Matt Creasey as Senior EVP World (minus EMEA). This is an elevation from his previous title, EVP, Sales, Acquisitions, and Co-Productions, Rest of World. This follows the company’s blockbuster merger with All3Media. The deal created an $8bn global TV production powerhouse, responsible for iconic shows like Peaky Blinders, Black Mirror, The Traitors, MasterChef, Big Brother, Survivor, and more. With a library of 265,000 hours of content.

Turkey submits the social drama Like a Limbless Tree as its submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. Directed by Tunç Davut, the film follows a retired engineer whose life changes forever after being diagnosed with a terminal disease. To make matters worse, his Syrian caregiver ran away, making him in charge of her two children. Turkey has submitted films for the Academy Awards since 1964, but never received a nomination. Let’s see if this colorful drama makes history.

Switzerland chooses director Nicolas Wadimoff’s Who Is Still Alive as their submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. The feature is an experimental doc in which Palestinian refugees recreate their escape from Gaza on a stage marked by chalk outlines, much like Lars von Trier’s Dogville (2003). Switzerland’s last Best International Film Oscar win was Journey of Hope (1991); let’s see if this daring doc could bring them an Oscar for the first time in 36 years.

ON THIS DAY

1945. Steve Martin born in Waco, Texas.

Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.

Editor: Gabriel Miller.

Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram

Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co

Only Murders in the Building, but the building is full of Doctor Whos. The sixth season of Hulu’s comedy adds Peter Capaldi (Twelfth Doctor in Doctor Who) to its cast, joining him with Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant, who have both played the time lord before.

Neal McDonough (The Last Rodeo) and Skeet Ulrich (Five Nights at Freddy’s 2) will star in psychological horror film Deify. The film follows a cult leader who is put on trial after making his devoted follower be burned alive.

The Baby-Sitters Club’s Shay Rudolph is joining season two of Prime Video’s Off Campus. The college-set romance series followed two couples navigating first loves amid their earliest years of adulthood. Referenced in season 1, Rudolph’s Summer Di Laurentis is the sister of smooth-talking hockey player Dean and will now be getting her own storyline.

One of the cast members of Nickelodeon’s long-running sketch comedy show All That, Christy Knowings, has died at just 46 years old. She starred alongside Kel Mitchell, Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes, and more with a number of fan-favorite characters (clips) over the course of her three-season run. Knowings and her colorful comedy will be very missed.

Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:

HBO Max’s Hacks, DGA’s Deal, and Disney’s Dream.

Let’s go!

If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.

Jean Smart has been nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for every season of Hacks; she has won 4 out of 4. Can she sweep? Click here for more info.

THE INDUSTRY TLDR

• Nick Reiner is formally indicted on two first-degree murder charges.

• DGA and IATSE urge California AG Rob Bonta and Paramount to make a deal.

• Disney adapts Miye Lee’s The Dallergut Dream Department Store to a feature.

• Netflix fast-tracks a The Lincoln Lawyer spinoff starring Cobie Smulders.

• Joe Roth will produce a feature adaptation of horror game Scary Teacher.

• Big Shot Pictures hires former MGM co-president, Adam Rosenberg.

• Seinfeld is staying on Netflix for another five years.

• Alden Ehrenreich joins Michael B. Jordan in Joseph Kosinski’s Miami Vice ’85.

• Greenwich takes North American rights to Sundance title Run Amok.

• 1-2 Special acquires U.S. rights to Closure.

• Netflix licenses Turkish drama Fatmagül for Latin America.

Yesterday’s correct answer: Skins, Nicholas Hoult’s first villain role.
36% got it correct.

Hacks is the most nominated series of the year. Click here for more info.

THE INDUSTRY NEWS

Nick Reiner has been formally indicted for the crime of first-degree murder of his parents, Michele and Rob Reiner. An additional allegation of “lying in wait” has been added as well.

He is currently being represented by a public defender, although he is trying to win half of the $1.5M in trust money to help him mount a defense. A trial has not been set, but there will be a pre-trial hearing on September 15th.

If convicted, Nick faces life in prison or possibly the death penalty. Read our Rob Reiner obit here: https://theindustry.co/p/rob-reiner-rip.

DGA and IATSE have spoken. They want Paramount and the State AGs to move their asses into gear, either negotiating guardrails on the merger or moving their March 2027 antitrust trial earlier.

The biggest pain point for the nearly 200,000 members of the directors’ guild and IATSE (whose members include below-the-line craftspeople and technicians) is that the uncertainty of the merger is causing confusion, leading to productions being canceled and job losses.

They’re proposing guardrails for the merger, including keeping the film studios (Warner Bros. and Paramount) and the TV studios as separate entities, while preserving HBO as a linear pay-TV channel. They also recommend implementing guarantees that production won’t drop below current averages.

Ellison has already said he’d keep both studios separate. But on the streaming side he does want to smash Paramount+ and HBO Max together.

Read DGA and IATSE’s joint statement here.

Tidbits:

Disney’s newest live-action film is an adaptation of The Dallergut Dream Department Store series with A Monster Calls writer Patrick Ness adapting. Korean author Miye Lee’s bestselling magical books follow the young Penny who sells dreams to her sleepy clientele when suddenly a nightmare threatens not just the business but all of society. Ness frequents the world of the fantastical, creating and writing the eight-part BBC Doctor Who spinoff Class (2016). No word on when Dream Department will start production.

Netflix is fast-tracking a Lincoln Lawyer spinoff built around Cobie Smulders, set to reprise her role as Mickey’s newly discovered half-sister Emi Finch. Original series EPs Ted Humphrey, Dailyn Rodriguez, and Matthew J. Lieberman will be writing the spinoff, with A+E Studios producing. The announcement arrives just months after announcing The Lincoln Lawyer’s ending, with season 5 doubling as Smulders’ introduction as a series regular.

Digital horror game Scary Teacher (trailer) is getting a feature adaptation from former Fox chairman Joe Roth. Created by Z & K Games, Scary Teacher is a stealth simulation game where students must infiltrate the house of Miss T – a scary teacher who terrorizes her students. Its gameplay videos garnered millions of views on many YouTube channels. Cory Todd Hughes and Adrian Speckert (Wri: Under Fire) will write the screenplay. Scary Teacher is pretty much similar to Five Nights at Freddy’s in that it is a horror game that got famous for gameplay videos – let’s see if it can start a successful franchise like FNaF.

Mini Tidbits:

Big Shot Pictures (Prod Co: Upcoming Animated Alvin and the Chipmunks film) announces Adam Rosenberg as their Head of Film. He was the Co-President of Production for MGM and Founder of ARO Pictures before the move.

Grab that éclair out of the trash because these pretzels are making me thirsty. Seinfeld is staying on Netflix for another 5 years in the US and Canada. The show is also staying on Paramount’s linear channels (Comedy Central, TV Land, etc.) for another 3 years. Yada yada yada.

Trailers:

Netflix’s Animals

• Trailer

• Dir: Ben Affleck

• Cast: Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun

• Release: Oct 9

Peacock’s The Paper S2

• Trailer

• Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Sabrina Impacciatore

• Release: Sept 9

Prime Video’s Neagley S1

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 16

MGM+’s A Tale of Two Cities

• Trailer

• Cast: Kit Harington

• Release: Sept 6

FX’s Adults S2

• Trailer

• Release: Aug 27

Netflix’s Crew Girl

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 10

CBC’s Son of a Critch S5

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 8

Ukrainian film Demons

• Trailer

• Locarno World Premiere: Aug 13

AI history drama Castle Walls

• Trailer

• Prime Video Release: Aug 13

First Look:

FX’s The Lowdown

• First Look

• Cast: Ethan Hawke, Tommy Lee Jones, Betty Gilpin

• Release: Oct 14

Release Dates:

Netflix’s Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory

• First Look

• Cast: Kit Connor, Taika Waititi

• Theatrical Release: Nov 5, 2027 (47-day theatrical window)

• Netflix Release: Dec 22, 2027

Sky and NOW’s SNL UK S2

• Release: Sept. 12

Documentary+’s WrestleHer

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 10

They saved the best for last. Click here for more info.

THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) is heading to Miami. Universal Pictures’ Miami Vice ‘85 squad just got a little bit bigger with Ehrenreich joining Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler in Joseph Kosinski’s big-screen take on the iconic 80s series.

Prior to landing his first Tony win for Becky Shaw, Ehrenreich’s last movie role saw him playing the flawed, small-town officer in Zach Cregger’s record-breaking horror Weapons (2025). Going from a compromised cop who leaves plenty to be desired to a world of undercover agents, where nobody can ever fully let their guard down, marks a fun pivot for the actor.

As Ehrenreich continues to land bigger films, from his supporting turn in Best Picture winner Oppenheimer (2023) to his strong performance in Sundance film Fair Play (2023), he’s proven adept at showing off both a natural charm and a simultaneous level of menace that makes him a smart fit for the volatile world of Miami Vice.

There’s no word yet on which side of the law Ehrenreich will find himself on, but production is set to begin this October.

Tidbits:

From child star to prestige TV veteran, Gaby Hoffmann (Amazon’s Transparent) is set to join Paramount+’s new limited series The Best of Us. Jeremy Strong leads the cast, with the series set to dramatize a relentless legal war to secure compensation for the thousands of first responders who fell ill in the wake of 9/11. Hoffmann will play a seasoned FDNY firefighter who was deeply impacted by the loss from the harrowing terrorist attack.

Before James Franco makes a small Hollywood comeback with the Rambo prequel film John Rambo, he’s starring in a vertical short drama, Love, Lies & Frank (trailer). The vertical short stars Franco as Jimmy Franks, the CEO of an ad agency who must run his company against criminal and supernatural threats. Produced by Knockout Shorts and available to stream on Shortical.

My Life with the Walter Boys’ Jake Manley is joining AMC’s upcoming NASCAR drama series Thunder Road as a series regular. Joining Dennis Quaid as a racing legend, aka The Wrecking Ball, Manley will play the son of a rival racing family who has been trained since birth to carry on the racing dynasty. Thunder Road will debut on AMC sometime next year.

Shirley Cruz (The Best Mother in the World) will star in Trans Coming-Of-Age film The She-Devil. The film is set in the 90s and follows a boy who becomes obsessed with an imaginary killer who attacks girls in their neighborhood.

Anson Boon (MobLand) and Ellie Bamber (Moss & Freud) are starring in a soccer film, Halftime Hero. Ridley Scott’s Scott Free and Live Nation are producing the film. The film will deal with the iconic incident when soccer coach Harry Redknapp pulled a foul-mouthed fan from the stands to play in a professional match.

Sagar Radia (Industry) joins HBO’s true-crime limited series The Trial of Louise Woodward. The drama will follow the true story of how an 18-year-old British teenager was accused of shaking a baby to death. Radia joins Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus), who has been cast in the titular role.

Click here for more info.

TECH SECTION

AI video generator Seedance 2.5 is blocking the use of Hollywood IP after its previous version, Seedance 2.0, brought outrage with its Cruise vs. Pitt fighting video. As more and more AI is integrated into filmmaking, these regulations are the protection that keeps these tech companies from stealing cultural icons as actors and characters to profit off of them. For the industry to survive, we need to protect the people and the IP that give these tools to make something valuable in the first place.

The American Film Market is expanding its Innovation Hub with the launch of AFM House, in collaboration with Cannes Next. The hub will bring together AI startups and leading technology companies with filmmakers and creators.

INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Greenwich Entertainment picks up North American rights to Sundance 2026’s Run Amok. The film centers on a teen who re-stages her high school shooting as a musical. Patrick Wilson and Molly Ringwald star, but this definitely is not Sixteen Candles. No word on release date.

1-2 Special (Dist: Rose of Nevada starring Callum Turner) acquires the U.S. rights to Michał Marczak’s documentary Closure. The film, which premiered at Sundance, follows Daniel Dymiński, a father on a mission to locate his son, Chris, who was last seen by surveillance cameras walking on Warsaw’s Gdańsk Bridge.

The late Gordon Bressack’s (Wri: Pinky & The Brain) play Fuggedaboudit! is being turned into a feature puppet film by his son, James Cullen Bressack. The film follows a New York model who loses his memory and is confronted by an ex-fiancée, an ex-girlfriend, and a mobster who all want to rewrite his past. Sounds gloriously zany.

Netflix will distribute Fatmagül – an iconic Turkish drama from 2010 – for Latin America. Fatmagül has been sold to over 150 countries. The series follows a young village woman who is assaulted by a group of wealthy men and then forced to marry Kerim, a man present during the attack, to conceal the crime. The show starts streaming on Aug 19.

ON THIS DAY

1967. Bonnie and Clyde is released.

Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.

Editor: Gabriel Miller.

Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram

Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co

• Hot properties: spotlighting the week’s authors whose work is being adapted by major studios/production companies, and who have other novels with strong screen potential.

• Bestsellers: the top authors from the top bestseller lists whose work is ripe for Film/TV.

• Booker Prize Nominees: looking at this year’s longlist for the Booker Prize, and finding interesting novels in the author’s back catalog.

• Games: in the wake of The Legend of Zelda getting a live-action adaptation by director Wes Ball (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes) and Sony, we have picked a game perfect for adaptation.

• Hidden Gem: a spotlight on an unknown book that could make for a phenomenal film.

If this email is cut off at the bottom, see the full article here.

HOT PROPERTIES

Book 1: Grady Hendrix’s We Sold Our Souls

Keywords: Film - animation, fantasy, heavy metal

Synopsis:

In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success - but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in rural Pennsylvania.

Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as a night manager - she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry’s meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris’s very soul.

This revelation prompts Kris to hit the road, reunite with the rest of her bandmates, and confront the man who ruined her life. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Analysis:

Imagine an animated, music-focused film, like KPop Demon Hunters - but metal. That’s the potential with this adaptation.

In a similar vein to K-Pop, metal music has a dedicated following of fans who will show up for their music. The music genre has worked well in animation before, as seen with the Adult Swim series Metalocalypse. A key to that show’s success with fans was the endorsement from metal icons who lent their voices to the show - including Kirk Hammett, Corpsegrinder, and Jack Black. This project would have a far more sincere and fantastical tone, but would similarly respect the subculture.

A project of this scale would need a safe pair of hands to look after it - potentially Bob Persichetti, co-director of the first and third installments of the Spider-Verse trilogy. And the perfect score would have to be created by Trent Reznor - founder of Nine Inch Nails and prolific composer (Soul, Challengers).

Why it’s hot: Taking the extreme success of KPop Demon Hunters and applying it to the metal scene would produce a very successful animated film - especially combined with the work of Grady Hendrix, whose other novel, The Final Girl Support Group, is currently being adapted by Christopher Landon (Paranormal Activity).

Book 2: Alex Michaelides’s The Maidens

Keywords: Series - murder mystery, dark academia, secret society

Synopsis:

Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this, Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek Tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike - particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens.

Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member is found murdered in Cambridge.

Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld?

Analysis:

This gripping, gothic murder mystery brings to mind the Robert Langdon film trilogy (The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, Inferno) in the way it mixes crime with ancient lore. In the place of Christian mysticism is the Ancient Greek mythos, currently seeing a resurgence of interest due to Nolan’s The Odyssey.

The audience for this property would similarly be fans of the “dark academia” genre, which explores academic institutions and studies with complex undertones - works in this genre include Mona Lisa Smile starring Julia Roberts and Dead Poets Society.

His novel was previously under option with Stone Village Television to be developed with Miramax. The development of this work into a series seemed to be the objective, which I believe is the best way to adapt this work - each section of the mystery being revealed episode-by-episode.

Why it’s hot: Murder mysteries are not slowing down, with Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building being renewed for a 6th season - and for new material with a dark academia twist, Michaelides is a strong bet; especially as Sony Pictures, Annapurna (American Hustle), and Brad Pitt’s Plan B (F1) are adapting his other novel, The Silent Patient.

Book 3: Lynn Painter’s Happily Never After

Keywords: Film - rom-com, light-hearted, weddings

Synopsis:

When Sophie finds out right before getting married that she’s been cheated on (again!), it’s time for drastic action. Instead of calling the wedding off, she hires a gorgeous stranger – Max – to interrupt the ceremony and confront her fiancé. Sophie enjoys taking revenge. So, when Max asks if she’ll work with him to help others expose their cheating partners, Sophie agrees. When they’re hired by a man who’s marrying the girl that once broke Max’s heart, Sophie expects Max to revel in the job. But instead, he seems to be wrestling with his feelings for his ex. And worse than that, Sophie is jealous…

Analysis:

This fun rom-com follows in the footsteps of many wedding-centered films in the last few years, such as Anyone But You and Palm Springs (minus the time-travel). The setting has always been a favorite, and a potential film that strikes the right balance between romance, fun, and clever writing could become a timeless favorite like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Made of Honor, and 27 Dresses.

To make a great rom-com, you not only need a lead couple that has great chemistry, but also to bring the joy. For this, I would cast Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value, The Great) and Steven Yeun (Minari, Nope), two actors who can be warm and tender, but also bring the chaos when needed (with Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Beef, respectively). I can imagine the journey of them cooking up schemes, then falling helplessly in love.

Why it’s hot: For anyone who can successfully recapture the wonder of early 2000s rom-coms in the modern day, there is a great reward. Lynn Painter is a great choice when it comes to material, with her other novel Fake Skating being picked up for adaptation by Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) with Sony Pictures.

Book 4: Sarah Pinborough’s We Live Here Now

Keywords: Film - psychological thriller, haunting, mystery

Synopsis:

After an accident that nearly kills her, Emily and her husband, Freddie, move from London to a beautiful Dartmoor country house called Larkin Lodge. The house is gorgeous, striking - and to Emily, something about it feels deeply wrong. Old boards creak at night; fires extinguish; and books fall from the shelves - all of it stemming from the terrible presence she feels in the third-floor room.

But these things happen only when Emily is alone, so are they happening at all? She is still medically fragile. Freddie does not notice anything odd. She, however, starts to believe the house is haunted by someone who had been murdered. As bizarre events pile up and her marriage starts to crumble, Emily becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about Larkin Lodge.

Analysis:

This project brings to mind gothic haunting stories such as Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and Sky’s The Enfield Haunting, while also being reminiscent of psychological thrillers where the protagonists mistrust their sanity, such as Shutter Island and The Invisible Man.

If made into a film, it would sit at an intersection between thriller and horror - spooky, but not an outright jump-scare gore-fest - for the audience members who try to avoid the scarier films in the horror renaissance we are currently having. Many successful films before have struck this balance, such as The Silence of the Lambs, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and Gerald’s Game.

Why it’s hot: A psychological haunting film that captures the thriller audience that wants to venture into scarier territory. Pinborough’s other upcoming novel, They Say a Girl Died Here, is being adapted by Carnival Films for television.

BESTSELLERS

Book 5: Kristin Harmel’s The Sweetness of Forgetting

Keywords: WWII, romance, mystery

Synopsis:

At thirty-six, Hope McKenna-Smith is no stranger to bad news. She lost her mother to cancer, her husband left her, and her bank account is nearly depleted.

Now, Hope’s beloved French-born grandmother Mamie is drifting away in a haze of Alzheimer’s. But in a rare moment of clarity, Mamie realizes that unless she tells Hope about the past, the secrets she has held on to for so many years will soon be lost forever. Tantalizingly, she reveals mysterious snippets of a tragic history in WWII Paris. Armed with a scrawled list of names, Hope heads to France to uncover a seventy-year-old mystery.

Hope pieces together her grandmother’s past bit by bit. Uncovering horrific tales of the Holocaust, she realizes the astonishing will of her grandmother to endure in a world gone mad. And to reunite two lovers torn apart by terror, all she’ll need is courage.

Analysis:

This brings to mind a mixture of classic war romances like From Here to Eternity and The English Patient, with a lifelong delayed romance like the 2010 romance Letters to Juliet. This story, split partly in the dark days of war-ridden Paris, is a slow reveal of a mystery carried by the lead’s grandmother, but it is also a wartime love story, only resolved many, many years later.

The device of splitting time between the past and the present, with the modern-day character exploring the life of another, reminds me of Julie & Julia - a beautiful and unique story with a great narrative structure.

All these elements will create a film that is equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking, seeing the worst of what humanity is capable of while also witnessing the most wonderful love that stands the test of time.

Why it’s hot: A wartime romance mixed with a slowly unfurling mystery, this film won’t leave a dry eye in the room. Harmel is a very talented writer when it comes to WWII, with her most recent book, Meet Me in Paris, becoming a bestseller.

Book 6: Shari Lapena’s An Unwanted Guest

Keywords: Film - murder mystery, seasonal, ensemble

Synopsis:

It’s winter in the Catskills, and Mitchell’s Inn, nestled deep in the woods, is the perfect setting for a relaxing - maybe even romantic - weekend away. It boasts spacious old rooms with huge wood-burning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, and opportunities for cross-country skiing.

So when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and a blizzard cuts off the electricity, the guests settle in and try to make the best of it.

Soon, though, one of the guests turns up dead - it looks like an accident. But when a second guest dies, they start to panic. Within the snowed-in paradise, something - or someone - is picking off the guests one by one.

Analysis:

Who doesn’t love a bloody, tense, and twisty Christmas Movie? Think Die Hard, think Netflix’s massive hit Carry-On. Did you check the Netflix view count on that one? It hit a whopping 172 million views. So yeah, this would be perfect for a holiday-season release.

And what’s more entertaining than a murder mystery? The Knives Out film series shows just how fun the subject of murder can be. Like Knives Out, the strength of this project will be in its ensemble cast.

Here is how I would cast a few of the characters:

• Gwen Delaney: The protagonist of the novel, a war correspondent who is struggling with PTSD.
  Cast: Rose Byrne - her portrayal of a tortured soul in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You would be perfect here.
  

• Dana Hart: A wealthy bride-to-be who is staying at Mitchell’s Inn with her fiancé.
  Cast: AnnaSophia Robb - known for her younger roles, I believe she is about to get a career resurgence from the upcoming film I Play Rocky. Able to channel a sweetness but with an edge when needed - as seen in The Way, Way Back.
  

• Beverly Sullivan: An unhappily married woman looking for a way to escape.
  Cast: Samantha Morton - she recently mentioned she hasn’t worked since The Odyssey, which seems crazy since her acting is wonderful! A fragility and fear of others, as deftly shown as Circe in The Odyssey, will lend to this character perfectly.
  

Why it’s hot: With a killer cast, this project would be perfect for a seasonal release in theatres or on streaming. A great choice for the murder mystery genre, Lapena’s other novel, Getting Away With Murder, is a current bestseller.

BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST

Book 7: Emma Cline’s Daddy

Keywords: Film - drama, anthology, human relationships

Synopsis:

An absentee father collects his son from boarding school after a shocking act of violence. A nanny to a celebrity family hides out in Laurel Canyon in the aftermath of a tabloid scandal. A young woman sells her underwear to strangers. A notorious guest arrives at a placid, not-quite rehab in the Southwest.

In ten remarkable stories, Emma Cline portrays moments when daily life buckles, revealing the perversity and violence pulsing under the surface. She explores characters navigating the edge, the limits of themselves and those around them: power dynamics in families, in relationships, the distance between their true and false selves. They want connection, but what they provoke is often closer to self-sabotage. What are the costs of one’s choices?

Analysis:

This project would make a great anthology art film, taking inspiration from Damián Szifron’s Wild Tales, where the six stories are not connected narratively, but thematically by one emotion: rage. The ten stories would need to be cut down to, similarly, six or seven at most - picking the most impactful for the big screen.

This film would need to be directed by one person, someone wanting to experiment with narrative structure - potentially an auteur, for example, Joachim Trier. He is a master at familial ties (Sentimental Value), complex relationships (The Worst Person in the World), and characters’ destructive feelings about themselves (Oslo, August 31st).

Why it’s hot: A single-director-led anthology of all the complexities of human relationships in a similar vein to Wild Tales from a hot, current author, Emma Cline - whose most recent book is the Booker-longlisted novel Switzy.

Book 8: Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys

Keywords: Film - drama, family ties, homecoming

Synopsis:

Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown for New York City as soon as they could. Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a Legal Aid attorney who idolizes Jim, has always taken it in stride. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan - the Burgess sibling who stayed behind - urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has gotten himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.

Analysis:

The complex dynamics of sibling relationships are hot right now, with Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, Trier’s Sentimental Value, and the exciting Herzog production Bucking Fastard starring both Mara sisters. It’s the perfect time for The Burgess Boys to be adapted - a feature set around the tension of a familial homecoming (à la The Royal Tenenbaums) of a messed-up family who have nothing in common except their traumas.

The casting of the siblings is crucial to creating the dynamic at the heart of the action - for the two brothers I would cast Cory Michael Smith - who has a real talent for playing characters with cutting personalities, as seen in Saturday Night and May December - and Nicholas Hoult (Nosferatu, The Menu), who could expertly play the less dominant, beaten-down sibling on the verge of snapping.

Why it’s hot: Family dramas surrounding siblings are big right now, so it’s the perfect time to adapt The Burgess Boys into a film. Also, Strout’s other book, The Things We Never Say, is Booker Prize longlisted.

GAMES

Property 9: American McGee’s Alice: Madness Returns

Keywords: Film - dark, gothic, fantasy

Synopsis:

Follows Alice Liddell, a young woman suffering from trauma caused by the death of her family in a fire. Alice was discharged from a psychiatric clinic and now lives in an orphanage for mentally traumatized orphans under the care of Dr. Angus Bumby. To get rid of the trauma and learn the truth about her past, she once again falls into Wonderland, where a new evil force has corrupted it.

Analysis:

This game is iconic. It’s a rare case where the sequel outshines the original. A gothic fever dream that takes the beloved Lewis Carroll novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and twists it into something disturbing, creepy, and fun.

As a film, I can see this becoming an incredible tour de force among older fans and young newcomers alike - especially with fans of other spooky TV shows such as Netflix’s Wednesday or The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Though an animation could work, I think the previous two examples argue the case for this project being live action.

This film, which is a 2010s fever dream, needs to stick to its roots. Stylistically, I can see it being similar to Repo! The Genetic Opera, a cult classic that came out in 2008 and oozed underground goth aesthetics. I can also see similar themes to Suckerpunch, with a protagonist in an asylum switching between reality and fantasy.

As for Alice, an iconic role demanding the perfect choice, I believe a talented up-and-comer would be perfect. Enter: Saura Lightfoot-Leon, who wowed as Maria in Luna Carmoon’s Hoard as a girl dealing with the emotional fallout of her troubled upbringing.

HIDDEN GEM

Book 10: Samantha Sotto Yambao’s Water Moon

Keywords: Animated Film - fantastical, alternate worlds, a journey

Synopsis:

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it.

Most will see only a cozy ramen restaurant. And just the chosen ones – those who are lost – will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike other customers. For he offers help, instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice – through rain puddles, hitching rides on paper cranes, across the bridge between midnight and morning, and through a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own – and risk making a choice she will never be able to take back.

Analysis:

This fantastical story is very Ghibli-esque, with notes of The Cat Returns and Spirited Away in its inclusion of alternate worlds. A family-friendly film with mature enough explorations of the self that adults will understand it on a deeper level. Although it would be wonderful for this story to become a Ghibli piece, it is more reasonable to imagine it finding a home with a smaller animation director.

Kenji Kamiyama is an animation director who is well-versed in fantasy, as shown by his two latest works, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim and Napping Princess. He also started his career working as a background artist on productions such as Kiki’s Delivery Service. With him at the helm, I’m sure something magical could be adapted.

See you next week!

Written by Molly Wise.

For consulting and/or advertising opportunities email clarke.scott@theindustry.co

Read more

Netflix’s Last Order, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Cuisine, and a statement.

Let’s go!

If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.

THE INDUSTRY TLDR

• Netflix acquires doc shorts One Last Order and An Open Field.

• Joseph Gordon-Levitt will EP & maybe star in Hulu’s Tokyo culinary drama Gaijin.

• Stallone’s Balboa Productions adapts romance series Bourbon & Lies for Amazon.

• Crunchyroll acquires worldwide rights to Makoto Shinkai’s next animated feature.

• Nicholas Hoult joins HBO’s Harry Potter Season 2 as Gilderoy Lockhart.

• The Secret Agent’s Maria Fernanda Cândido is set to star in Lost Objects.

• NYFF adds Jonathan Glazer and Eleanor Coppola docs; Tom McCarthy’s A Statement will world premiere.

• Lucy Liu is EPing Reset, adapted from a short film.

• Two-time Oscar-nominated doc director Bill Jersey dies at 99.

• Fremantle’s H1 revenue falls 8%, though adjusted EBITA rises 15%.

Yesterday’s correct answer: 100-200, shots in Gravity.
26% got it correct.

THE INDUSTRY NEWS

Netflix acquires two documentary shorts, One Last Order and An Open Field.

One Last Order follows the story of Sighle, who brought joy to her community as a loving presence at a fast-food hamburger stand.

An Open Field comes from director Teboho Edkins, who lost his brother in the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft crash in Ethiopia in 2019. The film will chronicle Boeing’s criticized response to the crash and the community’s mourning about the accident.

Netflix won the Short Narrative Film Oscar last year with The Singers. The acquisitions suggest that Netflix is looking to build its short-form slate and strengthen its awards momentum.

Sylvester Stallone’s Balboa Productions, via its first-look deal with Amazon MGM Studios, is adapting Bourbon & Lies, a romance series from Victoria Wilder. Set against the backdrop of Kentucky’s bourbon country, the story follows a former cop who is brought back into a world of danger when a beautiful stranger arrives in town with too many lies and secrets to keep track of. Created by the co-showrunners of HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, Meredith Lavender and Marcie Ulin, alongside her father’s company, Sophia Stallone’s Callisto Media is also on board to produce Bourbon & Lies.

This could be a fun little world; having spent some time in Kentucky myself, I know how seriously they take bourbon. Plus, there’s big money (like captain of industry type stuff) and horse racing. So very much aligns with Stallone’s current action series, Paramount+’s Tulsa King.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt will EP and likely star in Hulu’s Japanese drama Gaijin – Japanese word for “an outsider” – coming from Shannon Goss (EP: Shōgun). The drama will follow an American culinary school dropout who moves to Tokyo and takes action on his dream of opening his own restaurant. Think of FX’s Shōgun but with a Western chef. The series is based on chef Ivan Orkin’s real-life story that led to the creation of the famous Ivan Ramen restaurant.

Ivan Ramen is one of the best Japanese-American hybrid restaurants in the city. His cuisine is full of surprises, such as rye flour noodles and tomato toppings on top of traditional Japanese broth – let’s hope the series can be as unique as the restaurant itself.

Tidbit:

Crunchyroll (U.S. Stream: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle) acquires worldwide distribution rights (minus Asia, but not India) to Makoto Shinkai’s (Dir: Your Name) next feature animation. No info on the plot. Crunchyroll oversaw the global distribution of Shinkai’s Suzume (2023), which grossed $322M worldwide and even earned a Golden Globe nomination.

Mini Tidbits:

• Disney+’s Formula E

• Disney’s $4bn at the box office

• Ari Emanuel’s Broadway buy

All those and more here.

Trailers:

Sumerian Pictures’ Josephine

• Trailer

• Cast: Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan

• Release: Nov 20

Don’t snooze on this film; I believe this film has a shot at Best Picture.

Netflix’s Gentle Monster

• Trailer

• Premiere: Cannes

• Cast: Léa Seydoux

• Release: Oct 30

• Netflix Release: Nov 18

Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story

• Trailer

• Cast: Ella Beatty, Charlie Hunnam

• Release: Sept 17

Amazon MGM’s Verity

• Trailer

• Cast: Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett

• Release: Oct 2

CNN’s Top of the World

• Trailer

• Release: Sept 7

First Look:

Netflix’s The Body

• First Look

• Cast: Kristina Bogic, Sara Boustany

• Release: Nov 11

Release Dates:

HBO Max’s Harry Potter TV Series

• Release: Christmas 2026

Paramount’s Possession remake

• Dir: Parker Finn

• Cast: Callum Turner, Margaret Qualley

• Release: June 11, 2027

Disney+’s City of Blood

• Release: Sept 16

THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

Nicholas Hoult is joining Season 2 of HBO’s Harry Potter series as Gilderoy Lockhart, the vain, fame-obsessed author turned Hogwarts’ newest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Kenneth Branagh, very memorably, played the role in 2002’s Chamber of Secrets, bringing an almost cartoonish level to a man whose heroism is almost entirely borrowed.

Lockhart isn’t a stretch for Hoult. His Emmy-nominated turn as the cruel but charming Emperor Peter III in Hulu’s The Great, while frustratingly likable, was a ruler far more invested in his own myth and supposed “greatness” than his actual accomplishments.

His recent go as the brilliant but deeply insecure Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s Superman found him playing another man who can’t stand being anything less than the most important person in the room.

Hoult has spent a decade making frauds likable; the difference this time is an expansive book deal and a wand.

Season one of HBO’s Harry Potter series will premiere this December.

The Secret Agent’s Maria Fernanda Cândido is set to star in Lost Objects (Objetos Perdidos), a modern dystopian feature from director Luiz Fernando Carvalho (To the Left of the Father). The film follows a couple whose relationship crumbles during a nighttime blackout in an empty city, causing them to begin to question if their connection was ever real in the first place.

The veteran Brazilian actress broke through internationally in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Oscar-nominated The Secret Agent, in a role that was specifically written for her, as a woman with the wealth, influence, and connections to help Wagner Moura’s Marcelo escape Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship.

Lost Objects has started shooting this month.

Tidbits:

Newcomer meets veteran screen icon in Maya Butterfly, an Irish psychological drama led by Jessica Reynolds (Outlander) and Charlotte Rampling (45 Years). From Opera director and first-time filmmaker Edwina Casey, described as Tár meets Sound of Metal, the film follows a rising soprano who is secretly losing her hearing as she fights to survive her breakout production while avoiding the truth being exposed. Fittingly, a story about breaking into a tradition-bound art form is carried by a young actress doing just that, opposite one of European cinema’s most defining screen presences. Wildcard boarded for U.K. and Irish distribution with production currently underway at the National Opera House in Wexford.

Casting Tidbits:

• Veronika Slowikowska (SNL)

• George MacKay (1917)

• Zoe Bonafonte (The Lady’s Companion)

Those casting tidbits here.

Lucy Davis, most known for her role as Dawn Tinsley in the U.K.’s The Office, has revealed that she has been diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer. We’re wishing Davis strength as she undergoes treatment.

FESTIVALS AND DOCS

NYFF new additions:

Cannes winner, Fjord (Palme d’Or), and the biggest buy at Cannes, the very fun A24’s Club Kid. And Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard with Rooney Mara and Kate Mara. Plus A24’s The Debut directed by Jesse Eisenberg.

You probably know these films, as we’ve covered them before, but two more stuck out to me:

• Joy of Joys

  • Dir: Jonathan Glazer (Under the Skin, The Zone of Interest)

  • 38 min doc

Synopsis:

Musicians gather at the legendary Abbey Road Studios to record HELP(2), a star-studded charity album supporting War Child Records’ mission to aid children impacted by conflict around the globe.

Ok, so it’s not Glazer’s next magnum opus, but we’ll take anything from this guy. He’s a cinematic genius. Full stop.

• Making Marie Antoinette

  • Dir: Eleanor Coppola

  • Distributor: Mubi

Synopsis:

Follows filmmaker Eleanor Coppola’s behind-the-scenes documentation of her daughter Sofia Coppola directing the 2006 film Marie Antoinette, capturing the craftsmanship and challenges of being a young female director.

Look, the last BTS doc Eleanor gave us was Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse. It’s in the pantheon of the greatest BTS documentaries of all time. Her husband Francis came back from making Apocalypse Now a different man. And you know what, if you want to go a little insane, they put Eleanor’s whole doc on YouTube.

Also, Tom McCarthy (Dir: Spotlight)’s new film A Statement will world premiere at NYFF.

Mini Tidbit:

Films Boutique (Berlin Sales Agency) acquires worldwide rights to Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi’s doc I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies. The film follows both Tabriz and Tehran weeks before the 12-Day War and the US’ attacks on Iran.

INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT

Lucy Liu is stepping into the producer’s chair for Reset, the award-winning short film from writers-directors Celine Tien and Jerry Hsu that is now being developed as a feature.

Winner of Fantasia’s Silver Audience Award, Reset takes inspiration from the filmmakers’ own family histories and inherited trauma, imagining a society where citizens can physically reset to six years old once they reach 65.

Liu made her feature producing debut with the Tribeca-premiering Rosemead (2025), which she also starred in as a terminally ill mother struggling to care for her teenage son amid his worsening schizophrenia.

The newly released trailer for Reset offers a first look at another family-driven story for Liu in a row.

Tidbits:

Camille Delamarre (Dir: Brick Mansions) will direct sports car film Bugatti: The Final Race, from a script written by Andrea Iervolino (Prod: Michael Mann’s Ferrari). The film will follow the life of legendary racer Ettore Bugatti as he is living out the last months of his life. The script was initially to be written by Oscar-Winner Bobby Moresco (Co-Writer: Crash), but Iervolino will now pen the script himself – the first time the Italian-Canadian producer has taken on a writing credit.

La Nieve, a Spanish-language song featured in Cannes Best Director-winning film La Bola Negra, joins the race for the Best Original Song Oscar. The film follows three generations of Spaniards linked together by an unfinished play of the great Spanish author Federico García Lorca.

Two-time Oscar-nominated documentary director Bill Jersey dies at 99. He had a prolific career in documentary for over five decades, even earning his feature doc Academy nominations for his films A Time for Burning (1967) and Super Chief: The Life and Legacy of Earl Warren (1990).

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

RTL Group’s Fremantle is seeing a mixed first half of 2026, with revenue taking a significant hit. Stronger earnings and improved margins helped offset a decline in production revenue, putting the global entertainment giant on firmer footing for the remainder of the year.

• $964M Total H1 Revenue

  • Down 8% y-o-y ($1.04bn H1 2025)

• $69.2M H1 Adjusted EBITA

  • Up from 15.4% ($60M in H1 2025)

• The company remains on track for a 9% Adjusted EBITA margin

  • Up from 7.2% in H1

The company is expecting stronger production activity in the second half, including series like the upcoming Baywatch reboot and the Catherine Zeta-Jones-led Kill Jackie.

Mini Tidbit:

How to Divorce During the War has been selected as Lithuania’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.

ON THIS DAY

1931. William Goldman born in Chicago, Illinois.

Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.

Editor: Gabriel Miller.

Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram

Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co

George MacKay (1917), Louisa Harland (Derry Girls) and Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones) join Calvin Demba’s (Netflix’s Supacell) second short film, The Animals. The film follows Miles (Mackay) as he struggles with emotional impotence in his relationship with Ramona (Harland).

Zoe Bonafonte (The Lady’s Companion) stars as Spain’s first female soccer player in drama Veleta. Set in the early 20th-century Málaga, the film follows Ana “Nita” Carmona Ruiz, who is determined to compete in a sport closed off to women.

Walt Disney Studios racks up $4bn at this year’s box office. Toy Story 5 ranks in the top position at this year’s highest-grossing Disney film with $1.09bn. The studio also found success with films like The Devil Wears Prada 2 ($692M) and Hoppers ($390M).

Ari Emanuel’s (CEO of WME Group) Mari acquires Broadway and West End titan ATG Entertainment. ATG has more than 70 venues in the U.S. and the U.K., hosting over 18M theatergoers and generating approximately $1.1bn in annual revenue.

Disney taps Joss Hastings as Senior Vice President, Marketing. She recently led Disney’s F1 partnership and a sold-out Gentle Monster collaboration with the Disney brand.

Normally, when you see lineups, they are long lists. What we have done is broken it up into categories:

• Cover Story that breaks down the top films at the festival… and the top-performing and lowest-performing films at TIFF 2025.

• TIFF Industry News, which breaks out top distributors.

• TIFF Actor Spotlight, highlighting the top talent at the festival.

• TIFF Indie Filmmaker Spotlight, showcasing first and second-time filmmakers.

• TIFF International News, showing the top international filmmakers at TIFF.

• TIFF Discovery, spotlighting emerging global talent

• TIFF Midnight Madness, showcasing the top horror films. Last year, Obsession premiered at the festival.

• TIFF Docs, highlighting the top docs at TIFF this year.

If you know anyone that we mention, we’d appreciate you forwarding it to them.

If this email is cut off at the bottom, see the full article here.

Below is the full breakdown:

TIFF 2026 has films directed by Werner Herzog, Chris Rock, Siân Heder, Jesse Eisenberg, and Rachel Morrison, alongside films starring Cate Blanchett, Mahershala Ali, Michelle Yeoh, Helen Mirren, Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Cynthia Erivo, Javier Bardem, Christopher Walken, Jon Hamm, and Julianne Moore.

Whoever wins TIFF’s top prize, the People’s Choice Award, has a high chance of being nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In the past 16 years, 14 TIFF winners were Best Picture nominated, with four winning (Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King's Speech).

TIFF 2025 was no exception, with its People’s Choice Award Winner, Focus Features’ Hamnet, nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and winning Best Actress for Jessie Buckley. The film made $109M worldwide, remarkable for an indie film about grief. I remember sitting in the audience after the film finished and thinking this is the best ending for a film I’ve seen in a decade. So all in all, a smash hit critically and commercially.

And of course, TIFF had the unbelievable breakout film, Obsession. Which Focus Features picked up for $15M at the festival. At the time, we wrote how Focus Features was shifting their focus strategically to the horror genre. And it paid off in spades with Obsession making nearly $500M off a reported sub-million-dollar budget. That’s 2x more than any previous release by Focus Features.

Otherwise, at TIFF 2025, very few world-premiering films broke through. With many of the biggest TIFF 2025 films underperforming or bombing at the box office:

• Christy

  • Dir/Co-Writer: David Michôd (The Rover, Animal Kingdom)

  • Prod co: Anonymous Content, Black Bear

  • Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Katy O’Brien, Ben Foster

  • Release fate: $2M domestically, pulled out of theaters after 2 weeks.

• Good Fortune

  • Dir: Aziz Ansari

  • Cast: Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, Keke Palmer, and Ansari

  • Release fate: $26M theatrical on a $30M production budget, making it a loss for Lionsgate

• Couture

  • Dir: Alice Winocour

  • Cast: Angelina Jolie

  • Release fate: $225K domestically ($1.9M worldwide), one of the lowest-earning films in Jolie’s career

• Hedda

  • Dir: Nia DaCosta (The Marvels, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple)

  • Cast: Tessa Thompson, Imogen Poots

  • Release fate: straight to Prime, no major award nominations (the film is excellent, though!)

The other successful films at TIFF last year, other than Obsession and Hamnet, were A24’s Eternity, which made $35.9M worldwide, and Sony Pictures Classics’ I Swear, which won the BAFTA for Best Actor, beating out DiCaprio and Chalamet.

Will this year’s People’s Choice Award winner snag Oscar glory?

Here are the highest-profile projects rolling into TIFF this year, hopefully destined for awards/high box office returns:

• Being Heumann

  • Dir: Siân Heder (CODA)

  • Prod: David Permut

  • Cast: Ruth Madeley, Mark Ruffalo and Dylan O’Brien

  • Distributor: Apple

Synopsis:

1977. Disability rights activist Judy Heumann (Ruth Madeley) leads a historic 28-day occupation of San Francisco’s Federal Building, uniting protesters in a fight for accessibility laws and equal rights.

TIFF has called it “every bit as moving as Heder’s Best Picture Oscar winner, CODA.” It’s a big statement, but Heder’s ability to cut to the human heart of activism is brilliantly represented in her work.

• Alpha Gang

  • Dir: Zellner brothers (Sasquatch Sunset)

  • Cast: Cate Blanchett, Jon Hamm, Léa Seydoux

  • Premiering at Telluride

Synopsis:

Alien leader Alpha One and her crew disguise themselves as an armed and dangerous 1950s leather-clad biker gang to invade Earth. Their conquest plan derails when they experience the most toxic, contagious human disease of all: emotion.

Blanchett stated that the film “[Has] created a far-out world in order to lampoon something much closer to home: the hilarious, absurd, and peculiar truth of the human condition.” We couldn’t be more excited to see how she extrapolates these traits into this new role. Maybe it’ll be tinged with the poetic emptiness of Scarlett Johansson’s alien in Under the Skin.

• Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother

  • Cast: Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito

  • Distributor: Amazon’s Orion

  • Trailer

Synopsis

Follows Latif, a devoutly religious hitman, who embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children after his wife dies, confronting forces closing in and beliefs threatening to unravel.

Ali is a man of faith, a father, and a hitman. He sells oils and perfumes and kills to protect his community. It’s great to see an action film where the person doing the killing is pained by each death he inflicts. Ali brings a spiritual soulfulness.

• A Talent for Murder

  • Dir: Anton Corbijn (A Most Wanted Man)

  • Cast: Helen Mirren and Alden Ehrenreich (Fair Play)

  • Distributor: Bleecker Street

Synopsis:

A mysterious young man from a New York publisher is sent to Switzerland to persuade the renowned writer Patricia Highsmith to write one final installment of the Ripley anthology.

There have been many incarnations of Ripley films throughout the years, so we’re excited to see how Corbijn’s vision unfolds. His taut crime thriller A Most Wanted Man is very Ripley-esque, so we are confident this’ll be strong.

There are a number of films having their North American premieres at TIFF that world premiered at Venice, like:

• Netflix’s Ink

  • Dir: Danny Boyle

  • Cast: Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell

• Searchlight’s Wild Horse Nine

• Netflix’s Possible Love

• National Geographic’s Everest: The Other Side

  • Dir: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin (Free Solo, Nyad)

• Bleecker Street’s Musk (dir: Alex Gibney)

• Sony Pictures Classics’ Bunker starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem

  • Dir: Florian Zeller (The Father)

• Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Look Back

• Gael García Bernal’s Hombre al agua (Man Overboard)

• Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? co-starring Geoffrey Rush

Or Canadian premieres at TIFF that world premiered at Telluride:

• Apple’s Tenzing starring Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe.

• Focus Features’ Elsinore

• Bleecker Street’s Tender Loving Care

  • Dir: Mike Leigh

• Bucking Fastard

  • Dir: Werner Herzog

  • Cast: Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom

• Mubi’s A Long Winter

  • Dir: Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers)

  • Cast: Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Kit Connor

• Guy Nattiv’s The Liberation starring Carrie Coon

Two Berlin films playing at TIFF:

• Mubi’s Flies directed by Fernando Eimbcke (Olmo)

• Soumsoum, The Night of the Stars (winner: FIPRESCI Award)

Sundance favorites playing at TIFF:

• Josephine (cast: Channing Tatum, Gemma Chan)

  • The film won Sundance, and IMO is the best film of the year

• Sony Pictures Classics’ The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

• Sony Pictures Classics’ Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!

• Neon’s Once Upon a Time in Harlem

And all the Cannes winners will be playing at TIFF too:

• Fjord (Palme d’Or)

• Minotaur (Grand Prix)

• The Dreamed Adventure (Jury Prize)

• All of a Sudden (Best Performance by an Actress/my favorite film of the fest)

• Coward (Best Actor Award)

• La Bola Negra (Best Director)

• Greenwich Entertainment’s A Girl Unknown (FIPRESCI Prize)

• 1-2 Special’s Everytime (Un Certain Regard winner)

• 1-2 Special’s La Gradiva (Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize)

• Plus a few other Cannes favorites

  • Neon’s Hope - screening link

  • Pedro Almodóvar's tragicomedy film Bitter Christmas

  • Neon’s Clarissa starring Ayo Edebiri

  • A24’s Club Kid

  • Netflix’s Gentle Monster starring Léa Seydoux

  • The Beloved starring Javier Bardem (trailer)

  • Neon’s The Man I Love starring Rami Malek and directed by Ira Sachs

  • Neon’s The Unknown starring Léa Seydoux

  • Ashes directed by Diego Luna

  • Tangles (animated film, voice cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Seth Rogen, and Bowen Yang.)

And, of course, they’re re-playing Obsession. Screening link.

Congrats to all the filmmakers.

TIFF - INDUSTRY NEWS

Both indie and studio distributors came out in force at TIFF. Notably, Amazon, which is expanding its theatrical slate, is pushing many movies. Mubi, which had many films at Cannes and bought a few as well, has no films world-premiering. Although they are likely to make some buys. Warner Bros. is absent as well, which seems to be their new strategy post-Joker 2 crashed and burned at a festival.

Here’s a breakdown of what is world-premiering at TIFF:

Amazon MGM - 3 films, 2 shows

• I Play Rocky

  • Dir: Peter Farrelly (Green Book)

  • Trailer

The film tells the story of how Sylvester Stallone made Rocky. And in a true case of life mirroring art, it was a true battle. Stallone was a broke actor who spent a decade getting rejections and decided to bet on himself. I was blown away by how resonant it was. Perhaps because, as a filmmaker, I identified with the struggle.

Stallone’s story is as great as Rocky’s. I believe its Oscar chances are strong.

• Love of Your Life

  • Dir: Rachel Morrison (The Fire Inside)

  • Prod: Ryan Gosling

  • Cast: Margaret Qualley

Synopsis:

Maya, a smart, wry nurse, is swept up in an immersive love, that sets her life on a trajectory she never would have imagined.

• Phoolan

  • Trailer

Synopsis:

Follows an impoverished 17-year-old girl who becomes a famous outlaw and survives a brutal 48-hour siege when thousands of armed men trap her in a village.

This seems harrowing, and perhaps it’s a Best Foreign Language film play for Amazon.

Now the shows:

• Amazon MGM Studios’ Carrie

  • Showrunner: Mike Flanagan

  • Cast: Summer H. Howell, Matthew Lillard, Samantha Sloyan

  • Release: Oct. 26 (on Prime Video)

Synopsis:

A sheltered girl with telekinetic powers is bullied, leading to a horrific, bloody incident due to her domineering mother’s influence.

• MGM+’s American Hostage

  • Showrunner: Shawn Ryan

  • Cast: Jon Hamm, Giovanni Ribisi, Jonathan Tucker

  • Release: Fall 2026

Synopsis:

Fred Heckman, a beloved Indianapolis radio reporter, is thrust into the middle of a life-or-death crisis when hostage-taker, Tony Kiritsis, demands to be interviewed on his popular radio news program.

Interesting timing on this. Gus Van Sant just did a film on this subject, Row K’s Dead Man’s Wire, which performed poorly. But Hamm is great in this, as stern yet vulnerable.

A24 - 2 films, 1 show

• Misty Green

  • Dir/Wri: Chris Rock (5th feature)

  • Cast: Rosalind Eleazar, Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick

  • Trailer

Synopsis:

Years after her Hollywood breakthrough, a talented actress whose career has stalled fights for her second act.

• The Debut

  • Dir: Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain)

  • Cast: Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti

  • Trailer

Synopsis:

When an unassuming housewife is unexpectedly cast in a community theater production, she loses herself in the role under the spell of a strong-willed director.

• Crystal Lake (Show: Peacock and A24)

  • Showrunner: Brad Caleb Kane

  • Cast: Linda Cardellini, Bernadette Quigley

  • Release: Oct. 15 (on Peacock)

Synopsis:

Prequel series to Friday the 13th, follows a doomed small town where camp counselors come to die.

Netflix - 1 film, 1 show

• On Behalf of My Son (film)

  • Dir: Gabriel Martins

Synopsis:

At 75, Vicentina faces the death of her son, a bus driver who caused a tragedy by plunging off a viaduct. As the investigation suggests possible suicide, she seeks out the victims’ families to offer her apologies.

• Below (show)

  • Showrunner: Jesse McKeown

  • Cast: Josh Hartnett, Charlie Heaton

  • Release Oct. 8

Synopsis:

When a mysterious sea creature terrorizes a remote town, a fisherman must fight to protect his family, his community, and his way of life.

Neon - 2 films

• The Housewife

  • Star: Naomi Watts

Synopsis:

A New York Times journalist tracks down a potential Nazi officer living secretly in Queens. But when he befriends the suspect's elegant and charming wife, the implications of his investigation become much more unsettling.

• Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo

  • Dir: Takashi Miike

Synopsis:

A gambling-addicted Tokyo cop and an FBI agent search for a missing politician's daughter, while a mysterious killer lurks in the criminal underworld, watching their every move.

Apple - 1 film, 1 show

• Being Heumann

  • Dir: Siân Heder (CODA)

• Slow Horses (Season 6)

  • Showrunner: Gaby Chiappe

  • Cast: Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves

  • Release: Sept. 16

Universal - 1 show

• Crystal Lake (cross-listed above w/ A24)

IFC Films - 1 film

• The Stunt Driver

  • Cast: Ben Foster, Jay Baruchel, Ed Helms

Synopsis:

The film chronicles the daredevil stuntman Ken Carter's quest to execute a bold stunt of launching a rocket car across the St. Lawrence River from Canada to the United States in the 1970s, facing absurd challenges along the way.

Bleecker Street - 1 film

• A Talent for Murder (cross-listed above)

StudioCanal - 1 film

• Everybody Wants to F*ck Me

  • Star: Taron Egerton

Synopsis:

An original razor-sharp dark comedy thriller set in the world of modern dating in London.

Starts goofy and devolves into a straight, zombie-esque horror with throngs of women breaking down Egerton’s door to sleep with him. A great team of companies is behind this film: Studiocanal, Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap, Film4, and Parkville Pictures.

BBC - 1 film

• Onwards and Sideways

  • Dir: John Madden (Shakespeare in Love)

  • Cast: Laura Linney, Rhys Ifans

Synopsis:

Two people with lots in common - a great sense of humour, a love of dance and they both have Parkinson's.

There’s also some fun conversations with:

• Chris Rock

• Andrew Scott

• Lee Min-ho

• Rachel Morrison

Sign up for them here.

TIFF - ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

Double Naomi Watts. The actress is starring in two first-time feature debuts at TIFF:

Closing Night

• Cast: Watts, Odessa A’zion (Marty Supreme), Sarah Paulson

• Dir: Cody Fern (actor in American Crime Story)

Synopsis:

A renowned actress faces mounting pressure during show rehearsals when her estranged sister suddenly reappears after three decades. Their unexpected reunion stirs up buried family tensions forcing both women to face their shared history.

The Housewife

• Cast: Watts, Tye Sheridan

• Dir: Ben Shirinian

Synopsis:

A New York Times journalist tracks down a potential Nazi officer living secretly in Queens. But when he befriends the suspect's elegant and charming wife, the implications of his investigation become much more unsettling.

Watts is wonderfully chameleonic. Meaning that her characters can seem effervescent and, with a flick of the wrist, change to overbearing or even demonic. We can’t wait to see how she plays these roles.

Let there be Christopher Walken. The actor/dancer/ex-Bond villain stars in Back in Black.

Synopsis:

In a wellness-obsessed small town where nobody dies anymore, a struggling mortician faces bankruptcy - until his granddaughter devises an unexpected solution to save the family business.

Killing to save the morgue biz? Great premise! We hope to see Walken get a little bloody in this. First look image.

Cynthia Erivo is about to tear down your walls. She stars in Prima Facie. The synopsis itself gives me chills:

Tessa (Erivo), an ambitious defense lawyer expertly represents her clients, including those who are accused of sexual assault. However, she finds out that the law does not provide justice after being raped by a coworker.

Before her starring role in Wicked, Erivo’s performances have an alluring mystical quality that remains somehow grounded:

• ​Widows​ (2018)

  • Hustling hairdresser jumps at a million-dollar payday

  • “I don’t require a vouch.” ​Scene​

• ​Harriet​ (2019)

  • Academy Award Nominee for Best Actress

  • ​Watch​ her get a mystical vision from God

• ​The Outsiders (2020)

  • Staccato unorthodox police detective

  • “A human being cannot exist in two realities.” ​Scene​

  • (Our personal favorite)

We can’t wait to see her break down and force others to break in Prima Facie. Bring tissues

Tidbits:

Double Michelle Yeoh?! No, it’s not a sequel for EEAAO; it’s two films at TIFF. The first, It’s My Time (trailer), premiered in Asia. Yeoh plays a speed Rubik’s Cube-er. A story of galvanizing gamesmanship and ageless defiance. In the second, The Surgeon, which is world-premiering. She plays the titular character who had retired after a great career. But a ruthless gangster played by Martin Freeman leads her back to the operating table. Look, after EEAAO we kind of get Yeoh can play anything. She is fluid and flawless, and we can’t wait to see her in these.

We can’t wait to see James McAvoy embrace his dark side. He stars in Faith, which follows Gina (Erin Doherty, The Crown), a single mother who meets Michael (McAvoy), an enigmatic stranger. As their relationship deepens, Michael's extraordinary true identity is revealed, teaching Gina to embrace life fully again. McAvoy is great at sinking into heavier resonances with ease, like in Atonement.

French cinematic icon Isabelle Huppert is set to star in the titular role in the upcoming comedy feature All About Corinne, directed by Call My Agent! filmmaker Marc Fitoussi. While the actress is known for her fearless intensity in roles like The Piano Teacher (2001) and Elle (2016), Corinne is more understated, a supporting actress with big aspirations.

Noomi Rapace is back at it again. She’s a cold-as-ice FBI agent who is tracking down a suicidal Inuk teen who pierced an oil pipeline with a bullet. The film is In Alaska. The other actor to watch is Leo Matthew Temela, who plays the troubled teen.

Another standout Chase Infiniti performance? She stars in The Julia Set as a gifted mathematician who falls in love with her Teaching Assistant. So kind of like a more responsible Margo’s Got Money Troubles perhaps? The film co-stars Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs.

Simon Rex (Red Rocket) plays a high-powered charismatic salesman in God Bless You, Mr Kopu. Synopsis: Struggling to make ends meet, a meek and desperate Tongan man is drawn into a high-risk partnership with a successful and charismatic salesman who uses a nefarious tactic to swindle people out of their cash. Trailer.

Ed Helms in an Indigenous hockey sports comedy/drama! I’m in. He plays the coach in Smudge the Blades. From TIFF’s write-up: The sports-team movie blueprint covers new territory here. These Indigenous kids have distinct personalities — like the traditional one, who smudges his hockey equipment — and their challenges and triumphs feel unique to reserve life. Sounds like great fun and a bit of a new dramatic challenge for Helms.

Zooey Deschanel lands at TIFF with Trash Mountain. In a role engineered to tamp down her bubbliness, she plays a daughter who returns home after her hoarded father has died. It can’t all be sad; Jacki Weaver plays the grandma.

Paulina García (Gloria) plays a grandma whose granddaughter is kidnapped in this dark dystopian film: Love is the monster.

TIFF - INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT

Seth Rogen’s wife, Lauren Miller Rogen, comes to TIFF with her second feature film, Babies.

The cast is just great Oscar nominees Sharon Stone (Basic Instinct), David Strathairn (Good Night, And Good Luck), plus Ed Helms (The Hangover), Anna Kendrick, and of course, Seth Rogen.

Synopsis:

Struggling with the decision of whether or not to bring a child into the world, Annie (Kendrick) and her husband Aaron (Rogen) become instant co-parents when their newly-divorced friend moves into their home with her 3-year-old.

Miller Rogen’s first film, Netflix’s Like Father (2018) starring Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer, is heartfelt and heavy (trailer). We believe Babies will be equally powerful.

Courteney Cox is stepping back into the director’s chair for Evil Genius, a true-crime thriller led by Stranger Things’ David Harbour and Cox’s ex-sister-in-law Patricia Arquette (Severance).

The film will look at the true case of the “pizza bomber”, following a man who walked into a bank with a bomb locked around his neck.

Cox was first introduced to the story in Netflix’s 2018 documentary series (of the same name, trailer).

While Cox has worked in the horror/crime genre, the film is worlds apart from her last directorial feature, the dark comedy Just Before I Go (2014). The Friends star also directed several episodes of her sitcom Cougar Town (2009-15), but hasn’t worked behind the camera in any major capacity since.

Widely known indie producer Trudie Styler (prod. Snatch, Moon) is back in the directing chair. Her upcoming romantic dramedy Up Against It, which she also produces, has a stacked cast: Antonio Banderas, Richard E. Grant and Forest Whitaker.

This is her first time back in the director’s chair since her debut Freak Show (2017), which also dealt with complex familial dynamics. Follows a set of dysfunctional parents (Banderas) attempting to come together for their child’s well-being.

Maven Screen Media founder Celine Rattray (The Kids Are All Right), a longtime partner with Styler, also produces.

Tim Blake Nelson, who has a face you can’t forget (image), is also a director. His 6th feature is the new prison break thriller, The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, starring Amanda Seyfried.

In the film, her character, a former teacher leaving an abusive marriage, starts work at a maximum security prison and falls in love with someone she would’ve never expected… an inmate.

Nelson shared:

“Getting to work with [Amanda] on Mona Fastvold’s film Ann Lee last summer confirmed for me what an extraordinary person she is aside from her great talent.”

Maybe this’ll share a little DNA with Dead Man Walking. It seems to flow on similar relationship dynamics.

Mini Tidbits:

Rebel Wilson is gearing up to direct her sophomore feature, Girl Group. Wilson will also star as a pop diva who’s been kicked out of her own group, forced to do what she can to make a comeback. Wilson’s directorial debut, the Toronto title The Deb (2024), has remained unreleased for over two years now because of legal disputes with her new film being produced by Live Nation Studios (A Star is Born) and Future Artists Entertainment (Poker Face).

Sue Kim (Dir: Apple’s The Last of the Sea Women) has a doc, Always Lalisa, on K-pop idol–turned–global superstar Lisa (Blackpink). We’ve been blown away by Lisa’s acting in The White Lotus S3, so we can’t wait for this.

This was at Cannes, but Reed Van Dyk is making his directorial debut with Atonement, an Iraq War drama starring Kenneth Branagh and Succession’s Hiam Abbass.

Tim Headington, who produced Hugo (2011), Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) and The Green Knight (2021), is producing All That She Wants, which centers on Emma who, after a nasty breakup, hooks up with the charming, younger Luke, only to realize she used to be his babysitter.

Kristina Ceyton, who produced The Babadook and The Nightingale, is producing the sci-fi movie Future Tense. The synopsis is gold: Rich tourists use time travel to escape the past. An interracial couple's relationship is tested when one partner decides to change history.

I’m intrigued by Children Untold, which follows a 12-year-old orphaned girl in post-WWII Tokyo who disguises herself as a boy to survive the underworld, while her former teacher retraces her path. The filmmaker is Miwa Nishikawa and is adapting her own book. Very impressive. TIFF Platform section.

TIFF - INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho ​created one of the most heart-wrenching zombie films of all time when he put a father and his young daughter at the heart of this claustrophobic survival tale.

Sang-Ho’s new film is Paradise Lost.

Synopsis:

A psychological thriller that unfolds when Ryu Sun-woo, a son presumed dead in a school camping bus disappearance nine years ago, miraculously returns alive to his grieving mother, Ryu So-young.

The trailer is similarly evocative, and Sang-ho has a special talent for making the supernatural personal. This seems less gory than his previous fare but still emotionally lacerating all the same. Trailer.

Diary of a Mad Old Man has shades of Kurosawa’s Ikiru.

The film follows a seventy-year-old widower who recovers from a stroke in the care of his dysfunctional family. While his body is failing him, his libido still rages on -- unwittingly sparked by the attentions of his daughter-in-law.

There’s a redemptive quality to this, about feeling your oldness by embracing youth. It feels optimistic and pessimistic at the same time, and we love it. Directed by Wayne Wang.

Don’t miss anything from RT Features (prod co: The Witch, The Lighthouse, Paper Tiger). Their newest is Glaxo. It is set in a provincial town with a Glaxo factory; four friends’ lives unravel after a retired cop and his alluring wife move in. Their arrival triggers passion and vengeance during Argentina’s transformative decades from the ‘50s to ‘80s.

They also have Furies. That film is set during Lebanon’s corruption-fueled economic crisis – when banks denied millions of citizens access to their life savings – two women plan a bold overnight heist to get their own money back.

Mini Tidbits:

The sleekest of murder mysteries is Hur Jin-ho’s The Assassin(s). The trailer gives a great taste of the action. It’s edge-of-your-seat South Korean cinema, and we’re all in for it.

Erik Glijnis (prod: Neon’s The Secret Agent) is co-producing Four Seasons in Java. Plot: Released from prison, a woman returns to her village and tries to face the four seasons of her past. It’s fantastical and grounded.

The two producers behind Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, Anaëlle Béglet and Jeanne-Marie Poulain, are producing Toy Gun Bandit.

Ewa Puszczynska, the prolific Polish producer behind The Zone of Interest and Cold War, is producing Wild Wild East. Part suspenseful western, part gritty wartime noir.

TIFF DISCOVERY

The upcoming Toronto Film Festival has announced its Discovery program lineup consisting of 24 new projects from rising filmmakers.

Here are a few that stood out to us:

Discovery’s Opening Film:

Stuffed

• Dir: Theo Rhys (short film Stuffed, 2021)

• Cast: Jodie Comer, Harry Melling (Pillion)

Synopsis:

A taxidermist named Araminta seeks to preserve a human specimen when Bernie volunteers himself. Their unusual arrangement evolves into an unexpected love story.

Purgatory

• Dir: Lindsay Lanzillotta (prod: The Invitation)

• Cast: J.K. Simmons, Abby Elliott (The Bear)

Synopsis:

A 13-year-old girl in 1980s Ontario tries to hold her family together after her mother leaves home to self-actualize.

Drifter

• Dir: Sung Kang (dir: Shaky Shivers)

• Cast: Sung Kang (Fast & Furious franchise), Gregory Cruz (Hell or High Water)

Synopsis:

A lonely custodian discovers purpose and community when he enters the world of competitive drag racing.

Full lineup here. Including Ancestors co-starring Christina Hendricks. And SPC’s Sundance hit Bedford Park. And don’t snooze on We Are Born Good.

TIFF MIDNIGHT MADNESS

Will lightning strike twice?

TIFF has ten films selected for its Midnight Madness program.

Of course, last year’s lineup included Obsession, which was picked up by Focus Features and has now made $490M at the box office worldwide.

So, will any of these films come close? Here are our top candidates:

River

• Dir: Joshua Giuliano

• Prod: Steven Schneider (Paranormal Activity, Insidious)

Synopsis:

Three siblings who, after being stranded in a boat on a country river, are stalked by a faceless killer.

• Kick On

  • Sales Rep: Blue Finch

Synopsis:

When a night of partying leads four friends to KICK ON, at the extravagant drug-fueled lair of a mobster’s reckless son, they find themselves fighting for their lives amidst a brutal spiral of paranoia, violence, and ultimate betrayal.

Vintage Violence

• Cast: Cole Sprouse

• DP: Sean Price Williams (A24’s Good Time)

Synopsis:

A livestreamer (Cole Sprouse) discovers a cache of vintage denim only to run afoul of the Yakuza when he is lured to Japan to sell the jeans by one of his subscribers (Kiko Mizuhara).

More at TIFF’s Midnight Madness:

This one is first premiering at Venice, but don’t snooze on Paolo Strippoli’s The Spiral.

Also, not a world premiere, but Duncan Jones’ Rogue Trooper will play.

Experimental films get infrequent love, but this one is worth seeing: Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney. Directed by Matthew Rankin (who made the wonderfully absurd film Universal Language).

Excel Entertainment (Gully Boy) boards Malayalam Vampire Thriller Half. The film follows two half-blooded vampires on a violent hunt.

So this is in TIFF’s Centerpiece section, but Thai horror Inherit looks scary as hell. Check out the poster. Or don’t.

Also, in TIFF Centerpiece, but L’AUTRE is a horror comedy set in a hospital during recovery from cancer surgery. Where the imaginary starts to become very real (clip).

TIFF WAVELENGTHS

The Toronto Film Festival has announced the 11 feature films making up The Wavelengths program, projects that celebrate boundary-pushing filmmaking.

Here are the ones to watch:

The Diary of a Chambermaid (Le journal d’une femme de chambre)

• Dir: Radu Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn)

• Cast: Ana Dumitrascu (Jude’s Dracula)

• Premiere: Cannes Directors’ Fortnight

Synopsis:

A young Romanian woman living in France works for a French family and joins a theatre company who are adapting Octave Mirbeau’s “Diary of a Chambermaid.”

The Remotes

• Dir: John Torres (Todo Todo Teros)

Synopsis:

On an island where humans are controlled as avatars by a mysterious voice in a driving app, two estranged sisters with supernatural abilities team up with an overworked detective and rebel motorcyclist only to become haunted by a startling revelation: the voice they’re pursuing could be their own dead mothers.

Nobody’s Violence (Violence du corps de l’autre)

• Dir/Wri: Denis Côte (Curling)

• Cast: Gabrielle Lazure (The Beautiful Prisoner)

Synopsis:

Follows a traveling girl working for a mysterious organization that offers euthanasia services to desperate individuals in a dystopian world/

Full list of Wavelength titles here.

TIFF DOCS

Cheyenne feels like a Nat Geo pick-up.

Synopsis:

Cheyenne follows a group of fearless cowgirls who compete at riding wild broncos on the rodeo circuit after nearly a century of being excluded because of their gender.

Or, depending on whether it leans more silent and cinematic, we may be getting something that shares DNA with the artful and poetic Gaucho Gaucho (2024).

This one could be a fun doc for Nat Geo as much as it could for A24 or Neon, depending on how stylized it is: The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs.

Synopsis:

Indigenous Peruvian Amazon artist Sara Flores gains international recognition in her 70s, navigating between defending her community from illegal logging and the luxury art world.

We love the contrast here. And we can only imagine from this first look photo that Flores is wonderfully eccentric.

Mini Tidbits:

The next 20 Feet from Stardom? Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been shows another underappreciated musician one that Bruce Springsteen, Cher, and Dionne Warwick all praise in this high-spirited and warm-hearted portrait.

Jason Blumenfeld (prod: Saturday Night, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) and Jason Reitman serve as producers on Gail. This music documentary on an Our Lady Peace superfan follows her on the band’s 30th anniversary Canadian tour.

Dan Cogan (EP: Netflix’s Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, Prod: Nat Geo’s Sally) serves as a producer on Rapinoe. The doc follows Megan Rapinoe as she prepares for her last major tournament at the 2023 World Cup while engaging with her political stances.

This doc feels like a hidden gem: Still Night, Burning House. Synopsis: In Carol Nguyen's feature debut, a family journeys to Vietnam, where together they face long-unspoken questions about an uncle's mysterious death.

Drop what you’re doing and watch Turtle Island Rap. This doc has the soul of Patti Cakes, but minus the abuse. In fact, this doc showcases a mom and her daughter bonding over making rap music (trailer). Synopsis: The bumpy road to success experienced by three aspiring Indigenous hip-hop artists.

See the full list of 2026 TIFF films here, including the closing night film.

Written and edited by Gabriel Miller.

The show stars Jon Hamm as Coop, a former hedge fund manager turned amateur burglar who fancies himself a character straight out of a noir film: slick, composed, and methodical.

That fantasy, of course, comes crashing down to reality when his back gives out mid-burglary, the first of several moments where his body can no longer keep pace with his new lifestyle.

By season two, even Coop wants out.

And he’s not alone. Every major character tries, in some way, to leave the life they’ve built.

Tropper shared that’s the show’s real engine:

“There’s a lot of talk about people’s exit strategies, whether it’s getting out of Westmont Village or getting out of the life of crime. The lives we live create a gravity that the longer we live them, the stronger that gravity is in terms of pulling us back into it.”

So of course, season two’s antagonist comes to us in the form of Owen Ashe, played by James Marsden, a seductive disruptor with more money and more charm than anyone in town. Ashe is a representation of what everyone wants: pure escapism.

Part of what makes Tropper’s characters so human is what he refuses to do. He doesn’t let Coop’s flaws soften into a redemption arc, and he doesn’t let Ashe’s virtues linger for very long.

“The reason you don’t hate [Jon Hamm’s] character is that he’s flailing so hard. He’s just trying to right his own ship and he can’t.”

The choices Coop’s kids and sister make land as sharply as they do because they double as mirrors held up to Coop, exposing the same dissatisfaction driving him.

Similarly, Marsden’s Ashe comes onto the scene less as a straightforward antagonist than as a warped reflection of what Coop could still become.

Structured this way, gravity is the force organizing the plot: every attempt to escape pulls the characters deeper into the lives they’re trying to leave.

Even the title makes the point without saying it outright: your friends and neighbors aren’t people you choose so much as people gravity assigns to you through shared circumstances, and the show never lets anyone forget it.

Here’s the Season 2 trailer.

An interesting note for this season is that gravity had gotten hold of Tropper’s own career.

More than a decade of success on the genre path with HBO series Banshee (2013-16) and Warrior (2019-23) gave Tropper an identity, “the action guy,” as he puts it.

It was Your Friends & Neighbors that pulled him back to the show he wanted to write all along.

And for those unfamiliar with Tropper’s work, he’s also behind:

• Apple TV’s See starring Jason Momoa (S2 & S3)

  • Showrunner

• Apple TV’s Lucky starring Anya Taylor-Joy

  • Co-showrunner

Season three of Apple’s Your Friends & Neighbors is currently filming.

Apple’s Gravity, California’s Credit, and some flint.

Let’s go!

If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.

Where did all the A-list auteur directors go?

It was just announced that 4x Academy Award-winning director Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Roma, Children of Men) is co-writing and EPing a new series with Apple, Ascension.

We’ll get into the plot/cast, etc. But it’s startling and upsetting news.

Cuarón is one of the most talented cinema directors working today, but he hasn’t directed a feature in eight years. His last was the cinematically beautiful Roma (2018), which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

For the past seven years, Cuarón has had an overall television deal with Apple, where his talents have been underutilized. His last project with the studio was the series Disclaimer starring Cate Blanchett.

At the time, Cuarón described it like:

“I don’t know how to direct TV, probably at this stage of my life it’s too late to learn. We approached this whole thing as a film… To shoot a film takes longer, and these were like seven films.”

I applaud Cuarón for taking on the challenge, and the show walked away with two Emmy nods (Best Cinematography, Best Actress), but there was something altogether unsatisfying about it. It was a mystery that was so emotionally sprawling that when it collapsed down in the final episodes, it became, in my opinion, cheesy.

So, with the announcement of his new show, I can’t help but wish he would return to cinema.

It’s the same feeling I have about David Fincher, a director whose work I love deeply. I feel Fincher has gotten trapped by the seductive nature of having full control at Netflix, which hampers him from getting his movies a proper theatrical release.

Cuarón’s new series does sound exciting and centers on a doc filmmaker (Caitríona Balfe) who discovers a 20th-century cult that makes her feel better until she learns of its wicked nature.

Hopefully that isn’t a coded cry for help.

For More:

My favorite Cuarón film, Y tu mamá también, trailer.

Cuarón’s previous Apple TV collaboration, Disclaimer, trailer.

The Ascension series is inspired by this book.

THE INDUSTRY TLDR

• California awards $145.5M in tax credits to nine TV shows.

• Guillaume Canet returns to star in Netflix’s Ad Vitam sequel.

• Sony buys medieval epic script The Ballad of the Ember Knight in near 7-figure deal.

• David Ellison has prelim meeting about moving Paramount out of California.

• Jacob Elordi is in talks to join Scarlett Johansson in Ari Aster’s Scapegoat.

• Connie Nielsen joins Apple TV’s new Monsterverse series.

• Demi Lovato will return for Camp Rock 3.

• TIFF selects 51 projects for its Financing and Project Market.

• Samuel Goldwyn Films acquires Christmas comedy Merry Christmas, Aubrey Flint.

• BBC joins Working Title’s Jane Eyre adaptation starring Aimee Lou Wood.

Yesterday’s correct answer: Harry Potter is not a Lionsgate franchise.
84% got it correct.

THE INDUSTRY NEWS

The new $750M CA state tax credit continues to give. They’ve just allocated $145.5M to nine TV shows.

All in all, this is projected to generate $608M in direct production spending for CA while also creating 3,000 cast and crew jobs.

The slate includes a Clueless sequel with Alicia Silverstone returning as Cher and a Viola Davis thriller Ascent.

95% of the money was allocated to major studios and streamers:

• $45.2M – Disney

  • Untitled series

• $37.3M – Paramount

  • $21M – Ascent

    • Star/EP: Viola Davis

  • $16.3M – Clueless (CBS)

    • Star/EP: Alicia Silverstone, returning as Cher Horowitz

• $26.8M – Universal

  • $21M – The Rockford Files

    • Star: David Boreanaz as Jim Rockford

  • $5.8M – Newlyweds

    • Cast: Téa Leoni and Tim Daly

    • EP/Guest Star: Jamie Lee Curtis

• $16.2M – Sony

  • S.W.A.T. Exiles S2

• $11.6M – Amazon

  • Untitled comedy

• $1.2M – Netflix

  • Untitled animated Florida project

Tidbits:

Actor Guillaume Canet is reprising his lead role in Ad Vitam Eternam, the sequel to Netflix’s hit French action-thriller Ad Vitam (2025, trailer). The film will pick up where the last film left off, with ex-elite agent Franck Lazareff (Canet) being released from prison. The sequel is directed by Ludovic Colbeau-Justin (Dir: Netflix’s Néro the Assassin) and will follow him trying to hunt down the people who want him dead. Ad Vitam generated over 103M hours watched on Netflix, ranking as one of the platform’s top 10 most-watched non-English movies of all time.

We might be in for another 3-hour-long period epic, much like The Odyssey. Sony just bought the spec script for The Ballad of the Ember Knight, a 190-page 14th-century-set epic written by first-time screenwriters Kieran and Brennan O’Dea, for a deal near 7 figures. The film is set during the Hundred Years’ War when a hero is accused of murdering the royal family. In order to clear his name, he must protect the Kingdom’s last surviving prince from his political foes.

Mini Tidbits:

PSKY’s CEO David Ellison may be more serious about moving out of state than was initially thought. He had a meeting with his top executives, where he laid out his strategy to move Paramount out of CA if State AG Rob Bonta (who is suing to block merger) doesn’t negotiate by October 1st (the date the fees from WBD start to accrue).

Mini Tidbits:

• Rachel Tung renews ABC/Hulu deal

• 50 Cent EPs Vice’s Pay Day

• Disney inks deal w/ iHeartMedia

All those and more here.

Renewals:

ITV’s Sorry, I Didn’t Know (renewed for S7)

Trailers:

Neon’s Paper Tiger

• Trailer

• Cast: Miles Teller, Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson

• Release: Nov

MGM+’s American Hostage

• Trailer

• Cast: Jon Hamm, Giovanni Ribisi

• Release: Sep 20

Madman Films’ Big Girls Don’t Cry

• Trailer

• Release: Oct 9

First Look:

Netflix’s Fauda S5

• First Look

• Release: Sept 8

Peacock’s Dig

• First Look

• Cast: Amy Poehler, Hugh Laurie

• Release: Nov 23

Netflix’s The Sticks

• First Look

• Cast: Michelle Monaghan, Scott Bakula

• Release: 2027

Release Dates:

Netflix’s Ink

• Dir: Danny Boyle

• Cast: Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce

• US Release: Dec 11 2026

• UK Release: Jan 8 2027

Hulu’s The X-Files: I Want to Believe - Vrach Frankenshteyn (Director’s Cut)

• Trailer

• Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson

• Release: Aug 14

Netflix’s Here Comes the Flood

• Cast: Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson

• Release: 2027

THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

Oscar nominee Jacob Elordi is in talks to co-star opposite Scarlett Johansson in Ari Aster’s next A24 thriller Scapegoat.

From a reckless teenager in Saltburn (2023), to an abusive boyfriend in HBO’s Euphoria, to his transformative performance as a tragic monster in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025), Elordi has gone to some fascinating extremes without ever surrendering his control on screen. Ari Aster is possibly the best director to test that.

Frankenstein proved Elordi will sacrifice vanity for a role, disappearing into full-body prosthetics and a brutally grotesque physical performance, which suggests he won’t flinch from whatever subversive, traumatizing horror Scapegoat may ask of him.

A potential sequel to Aster’s 2025 satirical film Eddington, though many plot details are being speculated; nothing has been confirmed.

Scapegoat is projected to start shooting in November.

Tidbits:

From Broadway to indie drama, Jane Krakowski (30 Rock) has joined the cast of Nice Eggs, a coming-of-age drama feature. Not long after her titular run in Broadway’s Oh, Mary!, Krakowski will play a loving but erratic mother to Angourie Rice (The Nice Guys) who is determined to end a generational cycle of broken relationships in her family. Nice Eggs just wrapped filming in New Jersey.