Adrien Brody’s Vision
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Adrien Brody, Jessica Lange and an octopus.
Let’s go!
If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.
Check out our full Oscar breakdown here:
https://theindustry.co/p/oscar-winners-2025
Adrien Brody took his second Oscar for The Brutalist this Sunday. After The Pianist, it is the best work of his career.
Brody discussed the role:
“It’s about rigidity, artistic integrity and hollowness within… It was such a personal story. My mother is a Hungarian immigrant, she fled Budapest… in 1956.”
Some of the power of the role came from Brody drawing on his mother’s experience, internalizing her emotional truths from the experience while also harnessing his experiences acting in The Pianist, explaining:
“The whole joy of being an actor is to harness truths, whether they’re personal experiences or experiences of others that you research and hopefully gain some understanding of or empathy towards.”
Brody is a powerhouse in The Brutalist who displays a mammoth chip on his shoulder from the continual brutalization by those who regard him as an outsider. This is balanced with his sublime charisma for achieving impossible visions. Well worthy of an Oscar win. Here is the trailer.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Oscar viewership drops 7.1% from 2024.
The Oscars are skewing towards more international films.
The Academy, whose 8-year broadcast rights deal with ABC has ended, is exploring other partners for the show.
Disney Animation has canceled Tiana, a Princess and the Frog spinoff series for Disney+.
Glenn Padnick, co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment and key figure behind Seinfeld, has died at 77.
MNTN is divesting its stake of Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort production company.
Jessica Lange plays the drug addicted mother Mary Tyrone in the feature version of Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day's Journey Into Night.
Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge is set to narrate a documentary on octopuses.
Boutique distribution label 1-2 Special has acquired Kontinental '25 (dir: Radu Jude).
Anora is coming to Hulu.
Doctor Who season 2 premieres April 12th.
Canal+ Group will invest $503 M in European films and French content over the next three years.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Oscar viewership drops 7.1% from 2024 to 18.1 M. A few key factors impact viewing.
First, Oscar viewership has cratered in the post-COVID years. Note that pre-2018 the telecast was never less than 32 M viewers for US (internationally the numbers will be much larger):
2025: 18.1 M viewers
2024: 19.5 M viewers
2023: 18.8 M viewers
2022: 16.6 M viewers
2021: 10.4 M viewers
2000: 46.3 M viewers
The 2021 telecast was heavily impacted by COVID, drawing an all-time low number of viewers, yet since then, there has been a gradual growth in viewership—until this year.
The second reason the numbers declined this year was the lack of major motion pictures that were serious award contenders. The 4% increase from 2023 to 2024 is partly due to the Best Picture nods for the #1 and #5 top box office grosser: Barbie ($1.445 bn) and Oppenheimer ($975.6 M). Even though two of the Best Picture nomations, Wicked ($728.4 M) and Dune: Part 2 ($714.6 M) were the #3 and #7 performing films of the year domestically, they were never considered to win anything other than the craft awards and didn’t lead to a big draw for the telecast.
A third reason of the reasons that the viewership is lower:
The Oscars are skewing for more international films (20% of Oscar voters are international) as nine statues last night were awarded for films that premiered at Cannes:
Anora (winner: Palme d’Or)
Best Picture
Best Director
Best Original Screenplay
Best Actress
Best Editing
Emilia Pérez (winner: Cannes Best Actress)
Best Supporting Actor
Best Original Song
Flow (premiere: Cannes’ Un Certain Regard)
Best Animated Film
The Substance (winner: Cannes Best Screenplay)
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Cannes is about great cinema so it’s heartwarming to see the tastes now aligning with The Academy. However, this will likely alienate The Oscars' chances of gaining back a broader audience for their broadcasts.
Case in point, Anora has the lowest Box Office of any film to capture Best Picture.
One way The Academy may attempt to gain a broader audience:
The Academy’s 8-year broadcast rights deal with ABC has ended. They are now exploring other partners for the show. They’re talking with Netflix and other networks. ABC has been the distributor of The Oscars for nearly 50 years. If they go with Netflix, a company that has no interest in theatrical, it’ll be a gut punch to Anora director Sean Baker, who implored the industry to keep making movies to go on the big screen.
Non-Oscar news:
Kiss a few frogs: Disney Animation has canceled Tiana, a Princess and the Frog spinoff series for Disney+. Anika Noni Rose was set to reprise her role, but apparently the project has been in development hell. Announced in 2020, the project stalled creatively, yielding only one image in four years. This is also par for the course with Disney+'s restructuring of their shows, not to mention animation is not cheap. Moving forward, they will focus on shows based on the biggest IPs. While the series has been shelved, Disney will produce a Tiana special instead, but with no definite release date, we could be in a vicious cycle.
Glenn Padnick, co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment and key figure behind Seinfeld, has died at 77. A longtime TV executive, he produced Diff’rent Strokes, Married… with Children, and more under Castle Rock. Known for his humor and kindness and his distinctive laugh. Here's a clip of him talking about Seinfeld's laugh track.
Mini Tidbits:
MNTN is divesting its stake of Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort production company (Deadpool & Wolverine, Free Guy). The share will go back to its owner ahead of its IPO. The deal, closing April 1, maintains their creative partnership.
Executive shake-ups. Disney hires a Warner Bros exec. Sky loses a director of original film. And an exit from an executive at Prime:
https://theindustry.co/p/disney-sky-prime
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
With a truly legendary and illustrious career spanning 50 years, Jessica Lange will play drug addicted mother Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day's Journey Into Night, which has officially been adapted into a feature film.
Lange has won a Tony for the role having portrayed her hundreds of times on stage, with the last time during the 2016 Broadway revival. The two-time Academy Award winner shared that the role has touched her more deeply than anyone else she’s played, saying:
“She’s written with such beauty and love and truth and intensity that you never complete her. I could keep on playing her for the rest of my life.”
Loosely based on writer O’Neill’s real upbringing, the story follows one long, summer’s day in the life of the terribly dysfunctional Tyrone family who struggle with overwhelming feelings of guilt and regret as they each accuse one another of contributing to their current misery.
Soon after its announcement, Pollock (2000) actor Ed Harris joined as the patriarch of the family, James Tyrone, in the first collaboration between the actor and Lange since they shared the screen together nearly 40 years ago in the Patsy Cline biopic Sweet Dreams (1985).
Long Day’s Journey Into Night screened at the Glasgow Film Festival this past Friday night.
If you are enjoying the newsletter and see its value, please consider supporting the newsletter by becoming a premium subscriber https://theindustry.co/subscribe
Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge is set to narrate and EP Octopus! (IMDBpro Link), a two-part documentary special from Amazon Prime Video following a Giant Pacific Octopus from birth to death. Waller-Bridge’s Wells Street Films and Amazon first struck a deal together back in 2019 later renewing it in 2023, with the collaboration working on a number of additional projects like the series adaptation of popular video game Tomb Raider.
FESTIVALS
Boutique distribution label 1-2 Special has acquired Kontinental '25 the latest film from director Radu Jude (Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World), for North American rights. Winning the coveted Silver Bear Best Screenplay award at its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, Kontinental ‘25 is described as an innovative dark comedy set in the Transylvanian region of Romania.
Following its premiere at Berlinale, Ido Fluk’s Köln 75 has been sold to numerous European companies with discussion ongoing for UK and US distribution currently. The English and German-language pic tells the story behind one of the best-selling jazz records of all time, Keith Jarrett’s 1975 Köln Concert, how it almost didn’t happen, and how one formidable German teenager, Vera Brandes, breaks boundaries to set the conditions for the creation of a masterpiece. The New York-based writer Fluk is currently in development on the HBO series Empty Mansions.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The winner of Best International Feature at Sunday’s ceremony, the harrowing true story drama Brazil’s I’m Still Here, was a great way to give some praise to an important story told this year, and as a plus, the win was also a first for the country.
From director Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries), the film follows Eunice Paiva, a mother played by Best Actress nominee Fernanda Torres, whose life is shattered when her husband is devastatingly ripped from their lives and wrongly imprisoned during a frightening grip of military dictatorship in Brazil in the 70s.
The political biopic originally had its premiere at Venice, even winning the best screenplay award, and is adapted from Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s 2015 memoir of the same name.
The film was shot with a breathtaking stillness filled with powerful performances and a mesmerizing (in the worst way) story (trailer).
Tidbits:
Anora is coming to Hulu. There is an irony that if you were watching Hulu’s Oscar livestream, then you’d have missed Anora winning Best Actress and Best Picture, as it cut out. Nevertheless, Sean Baker was on fire, winning four academy awards for the same film, tying Walt Disney for the most Oscar wins in an evening. Anora will be available on Hulu March 17th.
New Who: Doctor Who Season 2 premieres April 12, starring Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor. The trailer looks promising, Disney's production looks like a step up, and Gatwa's seems to be thoroughly living in the role. New plotlines, promise sci-fi battles, Alan Cumming’s murderous cartoon, and a strange connection with his newest companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu). Season 2 will arrive April 12th on BBC and Disney+. Trailer here.
France’s leading TV pay banner Canal+ Group signs a deal to invest €480 M ($503 M) in European films and French content over the next three years. The agreement comes alongside a pact allowing Canal to keep its access to movies for six months after their theatrical release with local guilds (including BLIC, BLOC, and ARP). The French film and TV industry was relieved with the news as multiple projects depend on Canal+ financing to move forward with production, which have all been halted since their last agreement came to an end this past December.
Hard Bank: Left Bank Pictures has reported a 77% revenue drop after The Crown ended in 2023, along with earnings falling to £27.6M. Profits declined 82% to £4.2M. Their series on the popular Outlander books also saw losses. A leadership change will include Andy Harries becoming executive chair and BBC’s Charlotte Moore as CEO. Here's to hoping their next projects Dear England and This City is Ours, reach the highs of The Crown.
ON THIS DAY
1922. 1st vampire film Nosferatu premieres at the Berlin Zoological Garden, Germany.
See you tomorrow!
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram
Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co