Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Cannes’ Coward, Warner’s Winner and an Iron Boy.
Let’s go!
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As the Cannes festival draws to a close, I’m headed back to NYC early to catch Daniel Radcliffe in his final performance of Every Brilliant Thing
So, without further ado, here’s my biggest takeaway from the festival.
Filmmakers love telling stories about artists, and it’s not a bad thing.
In 3 of the official selection films, the main character is a filmmaker:
Sony Pictures Classics’ Bitter Christmas - Dir: Pedro Almodóvar
Gentle Monster - Star: Léa Seydoux (her character’s husband is a documentarian)
The Beloved - Star: Javier Bardem
If you expand that out to artists, you include 6 more official selection films:
Neon’s The Unknown (photographer)
Neon’s All of a Sudden (theater director)
The Man I Love (performance artist)
Garance (actress)
Fatherland (writer)
Parallel Tales (novelist)
That’s 40% of the Official Selection of artists.
Plus, shout out to Mubi’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (which opened Un Certain Regard), which also had the main character as a filmmaker.
The most glorious example is All of a Sudden, directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) - deep dive on why it’s my favorite film of the festival here.
But I’ve just seen one of the final films to premiere in Cannes’ Official Selection, Coward, which sees live performance art used as an escapist cure to the horrors of war. The characters in the film use it as a linchpin for their own relationship. And whether that romance is its own escapist fantasy is the question at the heart of the film.
More From Cannes:
La Bola Negra from directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, also, in Competition, is the new Palme d’Or frontrunner. The film has a great lead cast of Glenn Close, Penélope Cruz, and Julio Torres.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Bill Lawrence and Warner Bros. TV adapt alien-abduction romance novel.
Kerry Washington stars in and EPs Hulu thriller series What Remains.
Lionsgate reports $906M Q4 revenue, with film division revenue up 23%.
Courtney A. Kemp signs exclusive Apple TV overall deal.
Julianne Moore leads Higher Ground’s untitled Netflix mother-daughter comedy.
Kyle Gallner reunites w/ Strange Darling director JT Mollner for Sony horror.
Sadie Soverall joins Brady Corbet’s occult epic The Origin of the World.
Harry Melling joins HBO’s Task Season 2 as a hot-headed DEA agent.
Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning wins Directors’ Fortnight award.
Sony Pictures Classics picks up Cannes animated title Iron Boy.
20th Century adapts Choose Your Own Adventure w/ Radio Silence directing.
Supriya Pathak Kapur makes directorial debut w/ Toronto Market title Our Story.
LuckyChap’s Irish famine thriller Bad Bridgets lands at Netflix.
Yesterday’s correct answer: 2 Night at the Museum films feature Rami Malek.
49% got it right.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Book Adaptations:
Ted Lasso creator Bill Lawrence and Warner Bros. Television are adapting Steven Rowley’s novel Take Me With You into a series. Lawrence is coming off HBO’s touching and hilarious dramedy Rooster. Rowley’s freshly published story follows a longtime couple whose stagnant relationship is thrown into chaos when one of them is seemingly abducted by aliens, taking the Bill Lawrence TV universe into sci-fi territory for the first time.
Hulu is moving forward on a series adaptation of thriller What Remains, with Kerry Washington on board to star and EP. The story follows a detective and a devoted wife who is reeling from the guilt of killing a disturbed man in the line of duty. In her post-Scandal TV career, Washington has appeared in numerous book adaptations, consistently playing women haunted by the choices they were forced to make. From Imperfect Women to Little Fires Everywhere.
2026 is looking up for Lionsgate. Here are the Q4 2026 numbers, plus the change from last year:
$906M total revenue
↑ 4.7%
$651.9M total film division revenue
↑ 23%
$30.5M total TV division revenue
↓ 25%
$70.2M profit
Up from $3.6M loss
Thanks to their strong IP library and well-performing titles, Lionsgate’s next quarter only sees more growth, beginning with Michael on track to pass $300M domestically this weekend and become the first biopic to gross $1bn worldwide.
Full breakdown here.
Mini Tidbits:
Courtney A. Kemp (Showrunner: Starz’s Power) signs an Overall Deal with Apple TV. Under the new deal, Kemp and her company End of Episode will develop and create a series exclusively for Apple TV. Kemp has a long streak of success in television, including an Emmy nomination for her writing in CBS’s The Good Wife and her new series, Netflix’s Nemesis, which garnered more than 7M viewers in its opening week.
She’s been to Paris, to Rome, to Greece, and now we’ll be saying goodbye to Emily in Paris officially ending with its upcoming sixth season on Netflix.
Trailers:
Bleecker Street’s Victorian Psycho
Cast: Maika Monroe
Premiere: Cannes Un Certain Regard
HBO’s Earth, Wind & Fire
Dir: Questlove (Summer of Soul…)
This year’s opening night film at Tribeca
First Look:
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil
Constantin Film’s Into the Deep Blue
Cast: Damian Hardung (Maxton Hall), Sara Waisglass (Ginny & Georgia)
North.five.six is handling worldwide sales at Cannes
Release Dates:
Lionsgate’s Day Drinker
Cast: Johnny Depp, Madelyn Cline, Penélope Cruz
Dir: Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer)
Release: Mar 26, 2027
Lionsgate’s The Resurrection of the Christ
Dir: Mel Gibson
Release Date: May 6, 2027 (Ascension Day)
The Resurrection of the Christ Part Two
Release: May 25, 2028
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Julianne Moore is back as a panicking mother.
Julianne Moore will star in Netflix’s untitled comedy film, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s company Higher Ground. The film is being described as a multi-generational story in the same vein as Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), following a paranoid mother (Moore) whose daughter receives a cross-country promotion, forcing her to try to find a romantic partner to make her stay.
While Moore has frequently played mother characters, her roles are much deeper than they look. In May December (2023), she played a mother who was previously a sex offender who had sex with a 13-year-old. In When You Finish Saving the World (2022), she played a highly controlling mother who had a contentious relationship with her son.
We would love to see her panic and control in something lighter.
Tidbits:
A Strange Darling reunion. Actor Kyle Gallner (Strange Darling, Smile) is attached to director JT Mollner’s next horror, Sony Pictures’ Skeletons, from producer J.J. Abrams. Joining Oscar winner Brie Larson, the film is told from the perspective of a young boy who slowly begins to discover his parents are hiding a disturbing secret. Mollner likes to play with perspective, in his psychological thriller Strange Darling (2023), where Gallner played “the Demon”, a masochistic, eerie figure whose performance only became richer and more compelling as the film revealed who he truly was. Skeletons feels like a strong follow-up for both the director and Gallner.
Brady Corbet’s buzzy new epic The Origin of the World casts English actress Sadie Soverall (Every Year After) who joins its A-list headliners Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, and Selena Gomez. Soverall played the posh girlfriend to Jacob Elordi’s character in Saltburn. The film is about “American mysticism and the history of the occult,” with shooting beginning this September.
Harry Melling (Pillion) joins the cast of HBO’s Task S2. The show follows a reluctant task force FBI chief who hunts down a group of thieves in a Philadelphia suburb. Melling will play a hot-headed DEA agent working for Eddie Barnes (Mahershala Ali), directly going up against FBI agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo). Melling has made a reputation for melancholy, serene roles through his performances in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) and Pillion (2025). We are excited to see Melling go up against Mark Ruffalo.
Casting Tidbits:
Dev Patel
Amita Rao
Jason Alexander
All those tidbits and more here.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
The BAFTA-nominated indie director Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning has won the audience award at Cannes for Directors’ Fortnight. The film follows five childhood friends who have all hit 30 and are faced with the realities of their lives. The script is adapted by Irish playwright and Small Things Like These (2024) scribe Enda Walsh. Developed by BBC Film, Barnard’s longtime producing partner Tracy O’Riordan of Moonspun Films is also behind this feature.
Two Cannes US distributor pickups:
La Gradiva
Dist: 1-2 Special (A Poet) for North America
Dir: Marine Atlan (cinematographer The Girl in the Snow)
Winner of best film at this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week
Synopsis:
A group of high school students sets off on a school trip to discover the ruins of Pompeii. They are seized by a sense of vertigo. They allow themselves to be overwhelmed by desire and anger, until they surrender completely.
Iron Boy
Dir: Louis Clichy (animator on WALL•E)
Premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes
Dist: Sony Pictures Classics for North and Latin America, India, and Southeast Asia
Synopsis:
Christophe, a 10-year-old boy with balance issues navigates life in an orthopedic brace while his struggling family farm faces modernization. Torn between independence and mending ties with his distant father, he weighs his future.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
We’re letting the audience choose how the movie ends. 20th Century Studios is making a film adaptation of Choose Your Own Adventure with Radio Silence (Prod Co: Ready or Not franchise). Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (Dirs: Ready or Not) are set to direct the script written by Tom Bissell (Wri: Andor).
Choose Your Own Adventure was a hit literary series of “gamebooks” in the late 20th century, in which readers could decide how the story ends.
That just seems like a cozy fit. The first Ready or Not film has a card drawing sequence early on that determines the random fate of all the characters much akin to these books.
There have been many efforts to experiment with this “active” storytelling, most notably with Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018) that allowed its viewers to select how the main character would act in each narrative crossroad. We don’t yet know how Radio Silence will implement the key element of Choose Your Own Adventure to the screen. How will they pull it off?!
Indian actor Supriya Pathak Kapur makes her directorial debut with the loosely biographical film Our Story. The film will follow three women across three generations of the Pathak Kapur family. The script was co-written with her daughter Sanah Kapur. Our Story hits the TIFF Market in September.
LuckyChap’s Irish thriller Bad Bridgets has made its way to Netflix. Starring CODA’s Emilia Jones and Irish actress Alison Oliver (Saltburn), the drama is set in famine-ravaged 19th century Ireland following two sisters’ perilous journey to New York and the mayhem that awaits them there. From BAFTA-winning director Rich Peppiatt (Kneecap) the film is expected to drop on the streamer mid 2027.
New Indonesian drama Gasigogi finds its director in Miracle in Cell No.7 filmmaker Lee Hwan-kyung. The film is an intimate father and son story made for audiences to “understand the silence of their parents before it’s too late.” From Falcon Pictures (Indonesia dist. Sentimental Value), filming will begin this summer.
ON THIS DAY
2011. The Tree of Life wins the Palme d’Or.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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