Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
Apple’s Gravity, California’s Credit, and some flint.
Let’s go!
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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
Cast: Miles Teller, Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson
Release: Nov
MGM+’s American Hostage
Cast: Jon Hamm, Giovanni Ribisi
Release: Sep 20
Madman Films’ Big Girls Don’t Cry
Release: Oct 9
First Look:
Netflix’s Fauda S5
Release: Sept 8
Peacock’s Dig
Cast: Amy Poehler, Hugh Laurie
Release: Nov 23
Netflix’s The Sticks
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)
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.
Casting Tidbits
Connie Nielsen
Demi Lovato
Damon Wayans
All those and more here.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
TIFF is giving its next crop of films a chance to find their financial footing, with 51 projects in total from all over the world heading to the festival’s Financing and Project Market.
Key highlights:
Sher
Dir: Deepa Mehta (Fire)
Cast: Jeremy Irons
Synopsis:
After Sherlock Holmes’ death, Dr. Watson gives failed lectures in Calcutta and discovers Holmes’ secret daughter Sher, born from his affair with an Indian woman during his Cambridge years.
Apeman
Prod: Lucas Ford (Prod. Manager Backrooms)
Cast: Alex Wolff, Willa Fitzgerald
Central Park Tale (animated)
Dir: Daniel Jeanette (Visual Effects The Mummy)
Prod: John Fragomeni (Visual Effects Free Guy)
Cast: Keke Palmer, Regina Hall, Alan Cumming
TIFF: The Market will run from Sept. 10-16. Full list here.
Also: Best Friend Forever (Belgian film sales company) boards the international sales to Malayalam vampire thriller Half. The film follows two half-blooded vampires on a violent hunt. Premiering in TIFF’s Midnight Madness section.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Samuel Goldwyn Films (Dist: Bull starring Rob Morgan) acquires the North American rights to Christmas comedy Merry Christmas, Aubrey Flint. The film follows a toy soldier painter who hates Christmas, drawn into directing a chaotic production of A Christmas Carol in a struggling retirement home. John Bradley (Samwell Tarly in Game of Thrones) and Celia Imrie (Calendar Girls) star in the film, directed by Jack Spring (Three Day Millionaire).
The Peter Chernin and Google-backed AI firm Promise is developing a new horror feature titled Touch Grass, if you can believe it. The film follows a young woman who designs AI personalities for a secretive tech company only to uncover the terrifying truth about what her work is actually being used for. Touch Grass will be created through a production model that combines live-action actor performances, practical effects, traditional visual effects, and, of course, generative AI. The proliferation of these AI films is poisonous.
Mini Tidbits:
New production company Run-A-Muck (Courtside) is developing a feature adaptation of Torrey Peters’ gender-bending novella Stag Dance for the big screen. The Pulitzer Prize finalist is set among lumberjacks in a story of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal.
First-time feature filmmaker Kayla Arend, whose NYU Graduate Film program thesis was produced by Spike Lee, is getting her feature debut with Wreckless. The film follows a relationship between daughter Joni (Alexa Swinton) and her recovering addict father Larry (David Arquette) in rural Minnesota.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The Brontë renaissance continues, with the BBC joining Working Title’s new TV adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, with Emmy nominee Aimee Lou Wood (The White Lotus) tapped to take on the iconic title role.
Succession writer Miriam Battye is adapting the new take on the classic coming-of-age story, following Jane from her troubled childhood to her new life as a governess, where she encounters new challenges and unexpected love.
The broadcaster has a long history with the literary sisters, previously backing Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 Jane Eyre, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, as well as several earlier BBC adaptations of Emily’s Wuthering Heights.
The series adaptation is expected to premiere on the BBC sometime next year, coinciding with the 180th anniversary of the original 1847 novel.
Sony Pictures Networks India reveals its latest slate of TV shows as it pivots its focus to bringing its digital streaming assets closer to its bigger, more established TV business. The slate includes Season 18 of Kaun Banega Crorepati – a local remake of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, hosted by Amitabh Bachchan. Actor Ajay Devgn is also getting his own true crime series, Crime Patrol 2026.
Janitors are saving the world. Sarah Harper (Dir: Monkie Kid) is making an animated horror-comedy series, Doomsweepers (First Look), with Olan Rogers’ (Dir/Creator: TBS’ animation Final Space) studio Lightfold. The show follows a misfit team of janitors who save the world over and over again in a mysterious research facility.
ON THIS DAY
1964. US premiere of The Beatles’ debut film Hard Day’s Night in NYC.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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