Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Amazon 101, Comcast 911, and Guinevere.
Let’s go!
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I sat down with Jon Watts (director of the Tom Holland Spider-Man films), who EPs Amazon’s new Murder 101 docu-series, which just premiered at Sundance.
I also spoke with the series director, Stacey Lee, who riffed that the series is a mix of Dead Poets Society and The Silence of the Lambs.
That’s because the show follows a high school sociology class that replaced textbook learning with investigating a cold case. All led by their incredible teacher, Mr. Campbell.
Watts shared:
“The way he runs his classes, it is like a one-man show. He would pose these questions and like slowly—it’s like you’re in Edinburgh, like watching some incredible one-man show. He would tease things out, and he always had like one eye on the clock because he would end things on a cliffhanger and then the bell would ring.”
Campbell’s gusto energizes the students, who at one moment can be looking through gruesome cold case files and the next exploring the young flowering of a high school romance.
Where the series becomes truly profound is when we see that these kids all have their own baggage, and some of them also have parents who have been victims of gruesome crimes.
Lee expanded:
“[This class] enabled them in some of their cases to also reflect on their own lives and the experiences they’ve been through. And it enabled them to start to find solutions.”
As the series progresses, the high school kids’ confidence grows and we start to believe that if every school were like this, the world would be a better place.
Murder 101 releases in May.
For More:
Full interview with Jon Watts and Stacey Lee.
Interestingly, Watts is directing the feature film version of Murder 101, and much of the interview centers on him sharing how he developed both simultaneously.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Amazon MGM is developing a rom-com starring Cameron Diaz and Stephen Merchant.
Sony Pictures Classics makes Sundance buy #3 with Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!
Peacock adds +3M subs (44M total), $1.6B revenue and -$552M loss.
AMC Q4 (preview): $1.288B revenue (↓1.4%), -$127.4M net loss.
Apple Q4: Services revenue $30.01B (↑14%).
Working Title picks up Kirsten King’s debut novel A Good Person; Daisy Edgar-Jones producing.
Damon Lindelof returns to HBO with thriller series The Chain.
Prime Video orders Sex Criminals series.
Sony developing Guinevere (Arthur story through the queen’s POV).
South Africa pulls Amazon MGM’s doc Melania from theaters.
Erin Doherty + James McAvoy star in UK supernatural drama Faith.
Prime Video’s God of War casts Mandy Patinkin as Odin.
Rupert Friend joins HBO comedy Youth.
The White Lotus S4 adds Chris Messina (alongside Helena Bonham Carter).
Jamie Lee Curtis EPs multi-cam NBC pilot Newlyweds.
Danya Taymor directs Universal’s John Proctor Is the Villain adaptation.
Kin Lorber buys Two Pianos for North America.
Abramorama buys TIFF doc Space Cowboy.
New re-release distro label Déjà Vu Cinema Club launches with Half Nelson.
ITV orders 6-part Liverpool legal thriller Saviour.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Amazon MGM Studios is developing an untitled romantic comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Stephen Merchant (Logan, Hello Ladies), with Merchant also directing.
The film centers on a workaholic British employee at a luxury New York hotel who needs a wife for professional appearances. He strikes a transactional deal with a struggling stand-up comic who needs health insurance. What begins as a fake marriage gradually turns into an unexpected romance.
It’s got shades of The Proposal (trailer) but through Merchant’s slightly cynical cringecore.
Hello Ladies (trailer) had some scenes that were artfully awkward, Merchant clearly has the same arrhythmic pulse that his (former?) friend and past collaborator Ricky Gervais had.
Diaz continues her return to acting with upcoming projects including Outcome, Bad Day, and Shrek 5. It’s a pretty odd pairing, but I think that’s the whole point ya know?
Sony Pictures Classics makes the 3rd buy out of Sundance with Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!
Set in Japan, the film has a dash of the whimsy found in Disney films. It centers on a couple that loves ballroom dancing. At one point during a competition, they start floating mid-air. And that’s when everything goes wrong…
The film stars Oscar-nominated Rinko Kikuchi (Babel). No release date has been set
Q4 numbers for:
Comcast (including NBC Universal and Peacock)
AMC
Apple
Tidbits:
Mark Canton is joining Mandalay Pictures (Prod co: Highest 2 Lowest, Air). Canton will join as co-managing director overseeing film. It’s a bit of an oddball reunion as Canton was the chairman of Columbia in the early and mid-90s. His former boss back then was the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Peter Guber, who is the current CEO and Chairman of Mandalay Pictures. Their best film back in those days was Men in Black. Not much else. Will lightning strike twice?
Kirsten King’s addictive debut novel, A Good Person, has been picked up by Working Title Films (The Substance) with Daisy Edgar-Jones on board to produce. The novel, set to be published Mar. 31st, follows a jilted lover who puts a playful hex on an old flame that turns fatal. This marks the second time Working Title has worked with the Twisters actress after recently wrapping production on the new Sense and Sensibility adaptation.
Damon Lindelof is returning to HBO with The Chain, a new thriller series based on Adrian McKinty’s 2019 novel about a self-perpetuating kidnapping scheme that forces parents to abduct another child to save their own. Lindelof will serve as sole showrunner for the first time since Watchmen. The project is the first under his two-year overall deal with HBO, which began in September 2025.
Prime Video has ordered an eight-episode series adaptation of Sex Criminals, based on the Image Comics by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. The show follows two lovers who stop time during sex and use the power to rob banks. Kumail Nanjiani, and his wife Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick), along with Tze Chun (Gotham) co-create, with Nanjiani also acting.
Disney’s newly reorganized marketing structure names Martha Morrison to lead marketing for Disney Entertainment Studios and Shannon Ryan to oversee marketing for Disney Entertainment Television, Disney+ and Hulu. The new marketing enterprise will harness the collective strength of all teams under one Disney umbrella helping to further grow the company’s global reach.
Sony Pictures secures film pitch Guinevere, a new take on the King Arthur story directed by Emma Holly Jones (dir. Bleecker Street’s Mr. Malcolm’s List) and written by Kristine Lauren Anderson (wri. Cruella sequel). The film will be told through the eyes of Arthur’s Queen, Guinevere, who was quite a hero in her own right. The Sony project is in its very early stages of development.
Mini Tidbits:
WGA West authorizes strike
Melania doc pulled
Library of Congress adds titles
Verve promotions
All those mini tidbits and more here.
Trailers:
AMC’s The Audacity
Cast: Billy Magnussen, Sarah Goldberg (Barry), David Morse
Release: April 12
Starz’s Outlander Season 8
Release: March 6
Untitled Home Invasion Romance (that’s the full title)
Cast: Jason Biggs, Meaghan Rath (Hawaii Five-0)
Release: January 27
Pompeii: Below the Clouds
Release: March 6
Mambo Kids
Release: Berlinale 2026
Time’s On This Day… 1776 (AI show)
Release: TBA
EP: Darren Aronofsky
Made in part with AI from Google DeepMind.
First Look:
The Beatles
Dir: Sam Mendes
Cast: Barry Keoghan, Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson
Release: April 2028
Release Dates:
Varanasi
Cast: Mahesh Babu, Priyanka Chopra Jonas
Release: April 9, 2027
Guy Fieri’s Flavortown Food Fight
Release: March 4
The Entertainment System Is Down
Release: Cannes 2027 (planned)
Shoot Dates:
The Bookie and the Bruiser
Dir: S. Craig Zahler
Cast: Theo James
Shoot: March 2026
Untitled John Rambo Film
Cast: Noah Centineo (The Recruit)
Shoot: Now in Production
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Golden Globe and Emmy winner Erin Doherty (Adolescence, The Crown) and BAFTA winner James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland, Atonement) are set to star in the supernatural drama Faith, now in production in the U.K.
Faith follows Gina, a devoted single mother who forms a connection with Michael, a quietly enigmatic stranger whose true intentions remain unclear. As her life is abruptly turned upside down, Gina is forced to confront an extraordinary revelation that challenges her understanding of reality and offers the possibility of renewed purpose.
This pairs two acting heavyweights, Erin Doherty and James McAvoy, sharing the screen will be a tense experience, even more supernatural than the premise. Currently in production.
Tidbits:
Two new gods: Prime Video has cast Mandy Patinkin as Odin in its two-season God of War series, with Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Severance) as Thor. Two of the big bads from the second game are sure to face off against Ryan Hurst’s God of War, who, in a fun twist, voices Thor in the game!
Homeland’s Rupert Friend is joining HBO’s newest comedy Youth, alongside the wonderful Sharon Horgan (Bad Sisters), who is starring and producing via her banner Merman. A frequent collaborator with director Wes Anderson (The Phoenician Scheme, The French Dispatch), Friend is used to balancing high-stakes drama with some lighthearted humor. Youth follows a recently divorced couple navigating their new chapter of life.
The White Lotus has found another guest in Chris Messina, joining Helena Bonham Carter in the anticipated fourth season of HBO’s anthology series. Messina broke out as the divisive but lovable Danny Castellano on The Mindy Project (2012-17) and has since delivered a number of solid supporting performances like as the dedicated public defendant in Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 (2024). There is no official drop date yet for The White Lotus season four.
Jamie Lee Curtis may return to multi-cam. The Scream actress EPs (and may possibly guest star) in NBC’s new pilot, Newlyweds. Synopsis: a “later-in-life” love story about a free-spirited woman and a buttoned-up professor who marry impetuously after a whirlwind courtship. The project hails from Gail Lerner (EP: Black-ish). Curtis’s last guest star on a multi-cam was on The Drew Carey Show. Raunchy photo here.
Mini Tidbits:
Mary Stuart Masterson
Daniela Ruah and Natalia del Riego
Beanie Feldstein
Hannaha Hall and Jason Weaver
Elizaveta Neretin
New projects for the above actors here.
FESTIVALS
A number of sales companies have acquired new titles ahead of their respective festival premieres:
At the Sea
Int. Sales Rep: mk2 Films (Sentimental Value)
Dir: Kornél Mundruczó (Cannes-winning White God)
Cast: Amy Adams (Arrival)
Premiere: Berlinale
Synopsis:
After rehab, a woman returns to her family’s beach home, readjusting to her old life without her career that gave her identity. She faces her next chapter, forced to move on.
More Berlin/EFM projects here.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
The Tony-nominated playwright Danya Taymor is bringing her powerful stage show to the big screen.
Broadway hit John Proctor Is The Villain is a MeToo era story that was led by Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink for its acclaimed 12-week run following five young female students studying The Crucible.
Taymor won her first Tony for directing the stage production of The Outsiders, with her John Proctor coming the very next year.
The Universal film will mark Taymor’s feature film directorial debut.
Brainrot the Movie: Oh man, I don’t even know how to explain this… In the ever-growing need for IP, we have gone past the Skibidi toilet.
Story Kitchen is developing a feature film based on the hit Roblox game within a game, Steal a Brainrot. The game is kind of a collect-a-thon for meme-based joke characters… but I promise you it’s even dumber and harder to explain than that. However, it’s got insane margins, the game has surpassed 55 billion visits, and peaked at 25.8 million concurrent players.
So of course, they are making a movie out of it… I don’t think it will be for anyone reading this, but if you need to stay informed on the collapse of our world, take a look.
With anniversary screenings bringing in millions of dollars at the box office nearly every week, a distro label has been born: Déjà Vu Cinema Club.
This hails from Charades (sales rep: Sorry, Baby and Flow) and Maxime Vauthier (former: Studiocanal SVP of international library sales and acquisitions).
Their first film, which they’re launching internationally, is Half Nelson, which re-premiered in the Legacy section at Sundance yesterday. We just interviewed the writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck:
https://theindustry.co/p/anna-boden-and-ryan-fleck-dir-ryan
They aim to do this for 10-15 titles with a new theatrical, digital, and festival release + special restorations.
Two pickups:
Kin Lorber picks up Two Pianos for North American release. The film, which premiered at TIFF, follows Mathias, a virtuoso pianist, who lives an impossible love story. Charlotte Rampling co-stars. Watch the trailer, which plays like a well-acted French melodrama. Releasing this Spring.
Abramorama picks up Space Cowboy for North American release. This doc premiered at TIFF and showcases Joe Jennings’s unique skill: a skydiving cameraman. Jennings is credited with this skill in films such as Charlie’s Angels (2000) and xXx (2002). The trailer is astonishing, and we hear the film centers on a good deal of grief, anchoring it as resonant.
Mini Tidbits:
Greg Araki actor, turns to directing
Brave exec’s new venture
New company backed by Entertainment 360.
All those mini tidbits here.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Japan’s theatrical market had a record-breaking year, thanks in part to Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Infinity Castle: Part 1
JPY box office total: $1.79 bn
↑ 32% (2024, $1.34 bn)
Local productions reported the highest box office numbers by the MPPA of Japan:
Kokuho earned $127M
Detective Conan: One-eyed Flashback earned $95.8M
Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc earned $67.8M
The most popular imported films of the past year also brought in big numbers:
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning with $33.9M
Moana 2 with $33.3M
Jurassic World: Rebirth with $31.9M
Japan is looking to continue its steady growth in the theatrical space in the new year.
More international tidbits here:
Gomorrah update
ITV’s Saviour
Netflix China slate
All those tidbits and more here.
ON THIS DAY
1931. City Lights premieres at the Los Angeles Theater.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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