Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Apple’s Alive, A24’s Flesh and a French Kiss.
Let’s go!
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THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Apple lands Megan Park’s (dir: My Old Ass) next film in competitive bidding war.
A24 acquires Flesh of the Gods, Panos Cosmatos’ film now starring Wagner Moura.
Paramount promotes Allie McLarty to SVP of Global Communications.
Warner Bros. + New Line Weapons prequel, hires Zach Shields as co-writer.
Concourse Media appoints Jack Sheehan President of Worldwide Sales.
Cinemark CEO compensation rises to $10.8M.
Dennis Quaid to star in AMC’s NASCAR drama Thunder Road.
Matt Walsh joins Netflix’s Tires (S3).
Cannes 2026 to open with The Electric Kiss, a 1920s Paris-set artistic drama.
Justine Triet casts Odessa A’zion + Benedict Wong for English debut Fonda.
Vertical picks up Diego Velasco’s horror The Whistler.
Plan B Europe expands team with Maria Fleischer and Charlie Silver.
Disney+ exec Jonny Richards exits for BBC in rare streamer-to-broadcaster move.
Barunson E&A boards Thai horror Inherit for international sales.
Yesterday’s correct answer: 70s Javier Bardem’s first IMDB credit is El pícaro (1974).
25% got it right.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Amazon MGM Studios loses director Megan Park. Apple is now working with Park on her new film, previously titled Die Alive. Apple beat out a slew of studios in a bidding war, including Amazon, which paid $15M for Park’s debut film My Old Ass (2024) after it premiered at Sundance.
Produced by Margot Robbie’s Lucky Chap and FilmNation, Park’s new film is described as Adam Sandler’s Big Daddy meets Julia Roberts’ Stepmom. It follows a woman who gets stuck taking care of the kids of her boyfriend, whom she didn’t know existed.
Park will direct from her own script.
A24 picks up US rights for Panos Cosmatos’s new film Flesh of the Gods, an ‘80s LA vampire rave drama. This has been in the works for years, so I'm excited for this to get some movement.
The attachments are insane:
Cast: Wagner Moura (replacing Oscar Isaac), Kristen Stewart, and Elisabeth Olsen
Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en, The Killer)
Producer: Adam McKay
Sales Rep: CAA, WME, XYZ Films
Here is the official synopsis:
Married couple Raoul (Moura) and Alex (Stewart) each evening descend from their luxury skyscraper condo and head into the city’s electric nighttime realm. When they cross paths with a mysterious and enigmatic figure known as Nameless (Olsen) and her hard-partying cabal, the pair are seduced into a glamorous, surrealistic world of hedonism, thrills, and violence.
Cosmatos stated:
“Like Los Angeles itself, Flesh of the Gods inhabits the liminal realm between fantasy and nightmare… Both propulsive and hypnotic, Flesh will take you on a hot rod joy ride deep into the glittering heart of hell.”
Cosmatos (dir: Mandy)'s blood-saturated imagery has birthed new dimensions in cinema.
His debut, Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010), locates us squarely in a futuristic commune doubling as an asylum. The watching experience makes one feel like they’re a patient under heavy hallucinogens.
His sophomore cinematic psychosphere, Mandy (2018), is best epitomized by a scene in which Nicolas Cage forges a medieval battle axe and then takes a massive cocaine bump.
There’s no better director to ride into hell with. To the nine circles, we go!
Tidbits:
Paramount has promoted Allie McLarty to SVP of Global Communications, a newly created role that will expand upon her current role of leading corporate and financial strategies. McLarty will now oversee broader messaging across the company’s film, television, streaming divisions, as well as the nascent sports entertainment group. During a period of ongoing transformation for the ever-growing Paramount, McLarty will play a key role in shaping global communications as they continue to expand.
Weapons 2. After Weapons pulled in $270M globally, Warner Bros. and New Line are locking in an Aunt Gladys prequel film and have just brought on Zach Shields (story: Godzilla vs. Kong) as co-writer. Shields is a curious choice, he has a ton of experience with writing or producing creature features (he also served as consulting producer on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters). We never got Gladys backstory so maybe it’ll involve some sort of megalithic demon. With Amy Madigan pulling in the Oscar for her performance as Gladys, we’re really hoping to see her return.
Mini Tidbits:
Concourse Media (Sovereign) brings on Jack Sheehan as their new President of Worldwide Sales. Previously at Archstone Entertainment (SXSW’s Chili Finger), Sheehan will oversee global sales including Concourse’s upcoming heist thriller The Smack, starring Sam Rockwell and Kathy Bates.
Movie theaters may be under threat but their CEOs are doing fine. Cinemark CEO Sean Gamble’s total compensation for 2025 rose 10% from $9.8M to $10.8M. The global theater chain generated a total revenue of $3.1bn this past year.
2026 Paramount Writers Mentoring Program Application. Primarily for those interested in writing for Paramount TV Studios and Nickelodeon. Apply here.
Trailers:
A24’s Mother Mary
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel
Dir: David Lowry
Release: April 17
Blue Harbor Entertainment’s An Autumn Summer
Cast: Lukita Maxwell, Mark McKenna
Release: May 1
Neon’s All of a Sudden
Dir: Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car)
HBO’s U.S. Against The World: Four Years With The Men’s National Soccer Team (doc)
Release: May 12
Prime’s Kevin (animated)
Voice cast: Aubrey Plaza
Guest star voice cast: Cary Elwes, Charles Melton, Patti LuPone, Quinta Brunson, Tig Notaro
Release: April 20
Release dates:
Lionsgate’s Fall 2
Release: Aug 7
Peacock’s The Copenhagen Test
Channel 4’s release date: April 8
Sky’s Amadeus
US Starz release date: May 8
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Dennis Quaid is heading back into familiar territory with AMC’s Thunder Road, a NASCAR-centered drama series.
A multi-generational saga with roots in car racing as deep as its Southern setting, Quaid will take on Duane “The Wrecking Ball” Whitlock, a larger-than-life racing legend and determined father fighting to preserve a fading empire.
It’s a role perfectly suited to Quaid, who has built a career playing rugged, authoritative figures. From a respected athlete like Jim Morris in The Rookie (2002) to more recent, commanding roles like a police chief in underrated Tribeca title Sovereign (2025) or the President in Reagan (2024), Quaid brings a familiar gravitas to men defined by legacy, leadership, and grit.
Additional casting is ongoing with production expected to rev up this summer.
Mini Tidbit:
Veep’s Matt Walsh is joining the cast of Netflix’s Tires (S3) as a Tire World employee. We love seeing Walsh working jobs he neither hates nor loves. There’s so much beautiful deadpan-ness as he plays a doctor (not a dentist!) in The Hangover - clip. Rachel Blanchard and Garret Dillahunt have also joined the cast.
FESTIVALS
Cannes Film Festival 2026 will open with The Electric Kiss (La Vénus Électrique).
Synopsis:
Paris, 1928. A young painter in vogue, Antoine Balestro, has been unable to paint since his wife died, but he regains his artistic will after a gallery owner and a drunkard stage fake séances.
Cannes stated:
“The imaginings of the Roaring Twenties, marked by artistic effervescence, popular entertainment, and spiritualism, permeate this film, which remains faithful to the poetic cinema of [director] Pierre Salvadori.”
Don’t snooze on the Cannes opening film. Previous years have given us classics like:
2012 — Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
2001 — Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann)
1997 — The Fifth Element (Luc Besson)
1992 — Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven)
1963 — The Birds (Hitchcock)
1960 — Ben-Hur (William Wyler)
Mini Tidbits:
Cannes Director’s Fortnight will honor director Claire Denis with the Golden Carriage (Carrosse d’Or).
Lili Hinstin, Artistic Director of Locarno from 2018 to 2020, has died at 48 after a battle with cancer.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Justine Triet, the director behind the genius Palme d’Or winner (and my favorite 2023 movie) Anatomy of a Fall, is moving into production and rounding out the cast of her first fully English-language feature.
Cast:
Newly announced: Odessa A’zion, Benedict Wong, Ewan Mitchell (House of the Dragon), Cherry Jones (The Handmaid’s Tale)
Previously cast: Mia Goth, Allison Janney, Andrew Scott, Frank Dillane
Fonda synopsis:
A psychological thriller set in a seemingly idyllic huis clos (closed-door), Fonda takes us on a vertiginous dive into the shifting limits of a sound mind, as grief and obsession take hold.
MK2 and StudioCanal are producing Triet’s fifth feature film, with shooting scheduled in a few weeks.
Vertical Entertainment picks up Venezuelan director Diego Velasco’s sophomore feature, The Whistler. Velasco’s first film, Zero Hour (2010, trailer), was released locally in Venezuela, where it brought in a record-breaking $4M.
His new film centers on grieving parents who retreat to a secluded farm, only to become terrorized by nasty spirits.
Velasco is great at creating intense films where the stakes are ultra-high. Zero Hour pitted hit men who had holed up in a hospital against the police force after swaying the population with free medical care. It was a wild premise, but one he pulled off with great production value and constant action that drove the film.
Vertical is doing a day-and-date release with a limited theatrical run on April 17.
Tidbit:
The European division of Brad Pitt’s Plan B has hired two new senior producers. Sony’s previous International exec Maria Fleischer has been brought on as an Executive Producer and House Productions’ Charlie Silver (Disney+’s The Good Mothers) will take on the role of Development Producer. Led by Baby Reindeer producer Ed Macdonald, the London-based Plan B Europe first launched last fall, looking to expand the studio’s global reach beyond their already established deal with the Paris-based content group Mediawan.
Mini Tidbit:
Elvis (2022) producer Schuyler Weiss has set her sights on her next musical film Rosaleen from How to Make Gravy filmmakers Nick Waterman and Meg Washington. A love story, Rosaleen will explore the untold affair behind the creation of the Sydney Opera House.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Poison Pen (prod co: HBO’s upcoming V for Vendetta series) ups Fern McCauley to head of development. This is an ITV Studios production company led by Ben Stephenson (previously: Head of TV at Bad Robot).
Disney+ EMEA Director of Scripted Originals, Jonny Richards (A Thousand Blows) is joining the BBC’s drama commissioning team. During his five years with Disney, Richards worked on projects like the Steven Knight boxing drama A Thousand Blows and the series adaptation Rivals. It’s a rare move from streamer to broadcaster. Richards will start this summer.
South Korea’s Barunson E&A (Parasite) has boarded Inherit, the studio’s newest horror thriller for international sales. From Thai production house GDH 559 (How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies) and director Banjong Pisanthanakun (The Medium), the story follows an affluent family whose calculated image begins to collapse.
ON THIS DAY
1968. 2001: A Space Odyssey premieres at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C.
Written by Gabriel Miller and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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Megan Park’s debut was actually 2021’s “The Fallout”. “My Old Ass” is her sophomore feature