Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
HBO’s Half Man, Lionsgate’s Monopoly, and an Open Door.
Let’s go!
If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.
I sat down to interview Richard Gadd, who won three Emmys for Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, and now returns with HBO’s Half Man, which he created, wrote, and stars in.
It’s a masterwork of a TV series about not being whole, as Gadd explained:
“Half Man is really about two people who lack something in themselves that they think the other person answers for them. Like the validation that they feel in life only really comes from the other one.”
And this struggle to define completeness ensnares these two quasi-half-brothers.
Richard Gadd plays the hyper-macho brute who must control everything around him with his violence or sexuality. There’s an addictive quality to his essence, felt most acutely by his half-brother, Jamie Bell, who, while the same age, is almost half his size. Not so much in height, but in terms of stature and temperament.
Gadd expanded:
“I think [their] shame has quite a toxic ability of feeling before thinking and so they feel shame before they have the ability to rationalize it.”
The beauty of the series is when these two men complete each other by bearing their souls.
Gadd shared:
“They find freedom at the end for a couple of minutes when they’re confessing their truth. And what they’re doing is they’re being who they are. They’re admitting who they are. And within that, there is freedom.”
It’s so acutely felt by both half men as to burst forth from a smoldering fire of wondrous intensity, giving a blissful catharsis, if only for a moment.
For More:
Full interview with Gadd + trailer.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Lionsgate restarts Monopoly movie w/ two writing teams.
DOJ clears Paramount’s $111bn acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Lilo & Stitch co-creator Chris Sanders will direct Disney’s live-action sequel.
DGA’s tentative four-year deal includes wage, healthcare, and AI protections.
Kathryn Newton joins Hulu’s Cooper Hoffman-led drama pilot Durango.
Theo Rossi joins Prime Video’s Creed spinoff series Delphi.
Asghar Farhadi’s Cannes title Parallel Tales sells to 25 territories.
YouTube horror short Open Door lands a feature adaptation.
Jane Campion’s next film will be a musical.
Matty Matheson launches production company Athletic Film Co.
Blumhouse will adapt video game Dead by Daylight w/ director Thordur Palsson.
Friday’s correct answer: Yes, Lawrence and De Niro are in Silver Linings Playbook & Joy.
78% got it correct.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Making Monopoly Money. A monopoly movie is on the way… again.
Lionsgate has scrapped their previous script from last year and hired two pairs of new writers:
Neil Widener & Gavin James (A Minecraft Movie)
Rebecca Angelo & Lauren Schuker Blum (Dumb Money, Orange Is the New Black)
Before they pass go and collect much more than $200 for this payday, it’s interesting how divergent these takes could be. The Widener/James incarnation may aim to break $1bn at the box office and become a viral spectacle with its own Jack Black chicken song. Maybe Black could play the Monopoly Man?
The Angelo/Blum take seems to aim for a more resonant anti-capitalist requiem that puts people over blind greed.
Maybe we’ll get something in between. That’s what we got with Barbie. The production company LuckyChap and Hasbro are partners on Monopoly.
DOJ gives the green light for Paramount to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in a $111bn merger (full details here).
In a statement issued by the DOJ (read here), they outline why the merger won’t affect Streaming Video on Demand, Linear TV, and Studio Development, Production, and Distribution of Films for Theatrical Release.
Of course, David and Larry Ellison (the CEO and funder of PSKY, respectively) are close with Trump, which will have helped push this through.
The next battle will be with the UK’s regulatory board. And some of the state attorneys general, such as CA, are gearing up for a fight.
Also, for the second year in a row, the Warner Bros. stockholders have rejected their CEO David Zaslav’s pay package. However, the vote is non-binding and purely symbolic of their discontent.
The voice of Stitch is directing Lilo & Stitch 2. Chris Sanders, the co-creator, co-writer, and co-director of the original animated Lilo & Stitch (2002), will direct the sequel to the live-action hit Lilo & Stitch (2025). Sanders played the voice of the chaotic alien Stitch in both the animation and the live-action version of the film. The first installment of the live-action films earned over $1bn worldwide, becoming the third-highest-grossing film of 2025.
While Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch (2005) is the official sequel to the original animated film, the live-action Lilo & Stitch 2 will be a brand-new story written by Sanders. Sanders also directed The Wild Robot (2024), which told a simple story with great sophistication and heart, which is exactly what the live-action Disney films need.
The Directors Guild of America Board has approved a tentative four-year deal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
DGA President Christopher Nolan stated:
“We entered this negotiation with three main priorities: secure our Health Plan, protect jobs, and ensure that our members remain secure as AI continues to impact our industry.”
Key deal changes:
Wages and Residual Gains
Minimum salaries will increase by 3% on Jul. 1 of each year
Health Care Contributions
Contributions will increase by 24.4% over the term
Commitment for a Federal Tax Incentive
For the U.S. and Canada
Renewed 2023 AI Safeguards
Enhanced Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) Protections
The agreement now moves to the full DGA membership for ratification, with a vote being held on June 25.
View the full summary of the agreement here.
Mini Tidbits:
Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) now has 500M YouTube subscribers. That’s more than any person on planet Earth. So it’s only a matter of time before we get the Beast Games movie.
Roku is in talks to sell. No word on buyers, but the stock was up 20%. Roku had a great Q1 2026, w/ $1.25bn revenue (↑22% YoY) & $565M total gross profit (↑27% YoY).
A month after a settlement was reached on the infamous It Ends with Us battle, Justin Baldoni and his production outfit Wayfarer Studios must pay his former co-star Blake Lively’s attorneys’ fees while her claim for punitive damages was denied.
NBC’s Today, longtime quirky film critic Gene Shalit has died at 100 years young. From his signature handlebar mustache to his colorful bow ties, Shalit became a staple of The Today Show for over 40 years, reviewing thousands of films and books. Shalit has certainly left his mark on the film world and beyond.
No more magic pixie dust. Margaret Kerry, the model for Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell, has died at 97. Here’s a nice side-by-side image.
Greenlit:
AMC’s The Walking Dead: Streets of Survival
Renewals:
Netflix’s House of Guinness (for S2)
BBC’s The Uniform (for S2)
Trailer:
BBC’s Ludwig Season 2
Cast: David Mitchell, Anna Maxwell Martin, Mark Bonnar
Release: Aug
Release dates:
Damai Entertainment’s Dear You
Chinese Box Office: $223M
Chinese Release: April 30
U.K. Release: June 26
U.S. Release: TBD
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Kathryn Newton (Lisa Frankenstein) joins Hulu’s drama pilot Durango, starring Cooper Hoffman (The Long Walk).
The series will follow two Gen Z drifters on the run from the cops after a string of terribly impulsive decisions. Hoffman plays Mikey, a resident of a ski resort and a local snowboarding legend. Newton plays Bunny, a homeschooled runaway working as a diner waitress.
Newton has made her name as Hollywood’s next scream queen with a great sense of comedic timing in horror-comedy films like Lisa Frankenstein (2024), Freaky (2020), and Abigail (2024). She’s able to dial up a character’s intensity to the max, switching between an innocent high school student and a freaky serial killer. In Lisa Frankenstein, she had great romantic chemistry with the creature (Cole Sprouse), so we’re hoping to see that with Hoffman.
Tidbits:
Theo Rossi is stepping into the ring for Prime Video’s Creed spinoff series Delphi from Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society. The show will see a group of gifted young boxers fighting to achieve their dreams at the prestigious Delphi Boxing Academy. While Rossi’s role is unknown, if it’s anything like his fan-favorite character “Juice” from FX’s Sons of Anarchy, then he may be just the wildcard presence every great sports drama needs. Delphi is now in production in LA.
Hulu’s upcoming drama series Conviction casts Jimmi Simpson (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) to join Elisabeth Moss. Simpson’s role hasn’t been disclosed, but the series will follow a confident lawyer (Moss) who, in the middle of a case, is blackmailed by a mysterious stranger, forcing her to compromise legally and morally.
From CollegeHumor to comedy horror. Zac Oyama joins the cast of Best Friends Forever, starring Bobby Moynihan (SNL). This indie feature is about a bachelorette party gone supernaturally wrong. Oyama delivered the driest humor across years of sketches on CollegeHumor (clip), and we know he’ll deliver in Best Friends Forever.
Mini Tidbits:
Inanna Sarkis (After) joins Phoebe Dynevor (Fair Play) and Patrick Schwarzenegger (The White Lotus) in 20th Century Studios’ rom-com Beach Read.
Luciane Buchanan (The New Legends of Monkey) returns to the final season of Netflix’s The Night Agent as fan-favorite character Rose Larkin.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
Cannes Official Selection Parallel Tales from director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) sells to Canada, Australia, Germany, and 22 other territories. The film stars Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel. This got a lot of hate at Cannes, but it’s delightful in its narrative construction, with us seeing how fiction informs reality, which then becomes a distorted mirror. Like the twisted, indie version of Stranger Than Fiction.
Breaking Glass Pictures takes North American distribution to the romance thriller A Brief Affair, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
The age of YouTuber filmmakers has begun. YouTube sci-fi horror short film Open Door (2023) by director Kevin Cate will be adapted into a feature film.
The original film garnered over 15M views across many social media platforms and is said to have earned a six-figure development deal.
The premise of the short is quite simple: two people stuck on an elevator that goes to the -83rd (yes, minus eighty-three) floor to hell. A feature version of this three-minute short could be interesting, given that there isn’t that much context given to the audience regarding what “hell” would look like in this world.
With more than enough room for worldbuilding and exploration, Open Door could mark the feature debut of another soon-to-be film-making star born on YouTube.
Tidbits:
Blumhouse is getting back into the video game adaptation market. Following the two Five Nights at Freddy’s films grossing $530M at the box office, they’re adapting Dead by Daylight with director Thordur Palsson (Netflix’s The Valhalla Murders). More info on the game here.
Jane Campion’s new film will be a musical. She previously directed Netflix’s The Power of the Dog, which won her an Oscar for Best Director. No other details were announced.
More indie filmmaker tidbits:
Matty Matheson’s prod co
Watermelon Pictures picks up Who Killed Alex Odah?
John Zaring’s Thought
Details for those here. Plus, Matheson wrestles a fish.
ON THIS DAY
1960. The Apartment premieres in New York.
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