Channing Tatum’s Blue Valentine
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Derek Cianfrance’s new film. Aaron Sorkin’s sequel. And Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Sensability.
Let’s go!
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Derek Cianfrance’s new film, Roofman, starring Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, echoes his masterwork Blue Valentine.
Roofman follows a real-life Hamburglar, Jeffrey Manchester (Tatum), whose MO was to drill a hole through the roof of McDonald's and lock the employees in the freezer while grabbing the cash.
It was reported he did this 40-60 times.
After being sentenced to jail for 45 years, he escaped and hid out in a Toys "R" Us and even struck up a romance with a local woman (Dunst), bringing her children toys that he'd stolen.
With Cianfrance’s touch, this story of a McDonald's robber could be supersized into a noble romantic who challenges the capitalist system.
Cianfrance’s depiction of love in Blue Valentine (2010) is poetic and transcendent, and perhaps cinema’s best love story of the 21st century. For that film, he had the leads, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, live together for two weeks to simulate their characters’ boiling discomfort in their marriage.
Tatum shared how in Roofman, Cianfrance employed a similar technique, keeping him and Dunst apart until their very first scene:
"I was very, very nervous and that did something to me, meeting her for the very first time and having those real nerves. And then there was a real release in a way, a real falling into her because she's so loving, warm. and open.”
We can’t wait for Cianfrance’s electric authenticity to supercharge this romance between Tatum and Dunst. If it’s even a fraction of Blue Valentine, we won’t want to look away.
For More:
Roofman trailer.
Blue Valentine trailer.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Aaron Sorkin will write and direct The Social Network 2 for Sony.
Amazon acquires Don Winslow’s Collision, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
Kim Kardashian is producing a live-action Bratz movie for Amazon MGM.
Dave Bautista stars in rom-com The Romantic.
Paramount+ orders Ghost Fleet from Creed II director Steven Caple Jr.
Paramount layoffs hit BET.
Mel Brooks and Taika Waititi team for Very Young Frankenstein for FX.
Daisy Edgar-Jones will star in a Sense & Sensibility remake from Focus Features.
The Westies add Tom Brittney.
Prime’s Bloodaxe casts Jessica Madsen.
Jess Jacobs’ Joint Venture acquires If You See Something, co-starring herself.
Uptown Funk director Cameron Duddy makes his directorial debut.
See-Saw Films options Father Figure novel for TV.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Aaron Sorkin is directing and writing The Social Network 2 for Sony. The first film, written by Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, was a massive hit, making $225M theatrically off a $40M budget.
The sequel will be based on The Wall Street Journal’s The Facebook Files, which detail the nefarious ways in which the platform operates.
Much material for Sorkin to sift through, although what we loved about the first one is how much we rooted for Zuckerberg, despite him being a toxic force. We’d love to see Eisenberg reprise the role.
Paramount layoffs hit BET (a subsidiary of Paramount). As part of the company’s recent 3.5% reduction of its domestic workforce, BET will lose employees in the following departments:
Finance
Linear research
Legal affairs
The layoffs are part of Paramount’s plan to achieve $500M in annual savings, which saw a ≈2000-person layoff (15% US workforce) last year.
Right now, Skydance is set to acquire the company. Pending… The Trump/CBS lawsuit (which is perceived as holding up the merger) is in active settlement discussions, with a mediator proposing a $20M settlement from CBS. $17M of which would go to Trump’s presidential foundation or museum. Nothing is final yet.
Amazon's trio of projects:
In a highly competitive deal, Amazon won the rights to Don Winslow’s Collision with Jake Gyllenhaal already attached to star and produce with his Nine Stories production company. Collision is a prison reform novel following a dad’s struggle to survive and is a part of author Winslow’s upcoming story collection, The Final Score. This makes a reunion for Amazon with Gyllenhaal and Winslow, as the actor led the record-breaking Roadhouse remake last year, and the author’s Crime 101 (another short story) is currently in development.
Kim Kardashian channels her intrinsic understanding of plastic into the Bratz movie. Amazon MGM Studios has won a competitive bidding war for a live-action Bratz movie, with Kim Kardashian and Picturestart producing. Kardashian is also being heavily considered for the villain role. The film follows the success of Barbie and aims to get its own Bratz billion. We don't have a plot, but I assume it will be kind of like the Bratz dolls themselves, an edgier knock-off of Barbie.
MGM Television is developing a series from the debut novel of YA author Renee Ahdieh, Park Avenue. The novel, described as The White Lotus meets Crazy Rich Asians, was just published earlier this month, but MGM landed the rights in a very competitive series of bidding last summer. The scribe behind ABC’s The Good Doctor, Johanna Lee, is adapting Park Avenue.
Tidbit:
Mel doubles down: Just after announcing Spaceballs 2, Mel Brooks and FX, and Taika Waititi have announced a Very Young Frankenstein, a comedy series inspired by the 1974 classic. This is absolutely in Taika's wheelhouse, mixing his vampire familiarity with good old-fashioned slapstick. Puttin on the Ritz.
Steven Caple Jr. ( Director: Creed II) launches Grey Skies production banner at Paramount. Their first project will be Ghost Fleet, based on a Dark Horse comic, that follows a deadly cargo mission that leads to a vast conspiracy.
A trio of longtime Warner Bros. execs, Dana Nussbaum, Christian Davin, and John Stanford, will lead the company’s marketing and creative strategy teams. All three have held these roles in an interim capacity since January due to studio switch-ups.
Veteran producer Thomas H. Brodek, known for The Principal, Transylvania 6-5000, and a Stephen King miniseries, has died at 86. He held top roles at ABC Productions and co-produced Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
DIRECTV is phasing out satellite TV for new customers in select areas, shifting focus to streaming amid changing consumer habits and expanding broadband, especially in urban markets.
Trailers:
Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Release date: July 25
UniFrance’s Bardot
Kino Lorber’s Shari & Lamb Chop
Release date: July 18
PBS Masterpiece’s Maigret
Release date: October 5
Vertical’s Eden
Dir: Ron Howard
Cast: Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas, Jude Law
Release date: Aug 22
Release date:
Neon’s Palme d’Or winner, It Was Just an Accident
Release date: October 15th
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Daisy Edgar-Jones loves a book adaptation. The Twisters actress will headline the remake of Jane Austen’s beloved debut novel, Sense & Sensibility, with Focus Features and indie filmmaker Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean) directing.
With a relatively young career, Edgar-Jones has picked up an obvious pattern of leading popular book adaptations like:
Hulu series Normal People (based on Sally Rooney’s novel)
Where the Crawdads Sing (based on Delia Owens’ novel)
Last year’s On Swift Horses (based on Shannon Pufahl’s novel)
Ang Lee’s 1995 version of the endearing Austen classic was both a critical and commercial success, with Emma Thompson portraying the role of the eldest and more practical sister Elinor Dashwood opposite a young and passionate Kate Winslet. The casting for Marianne Dashwood, the embodiment of sensibility, Edgar-Jones’ sister, has not yet been announced.
Focus Features and Working Title Films worked together previously on the Oscar-winning adaptation of Pride & Prejudice (2005) and the 2020 book-to-film adaptation of Emma, so this new take is in good hands.
Production begins in the UK next month.
Dave Bautista wants to feel the love: Paramount has picked up The Romantic, a rom-com from Can’t Hardly Wait duo Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, with Dave Bautista starring.
He'll play Ed, a burly man (he would have to be right?), secretly writing bestselling romance novels under a female pseudonym. When his identity is threatened, chaos ensues at a convention and complicates a romance.
No director attached yet.
Tidbits:
Bella Maclean, who should be given an Emmy for her picture-perfect, coy, seductive looks on Hulu’s Rivals (clip), is starring in the upcoming indie drama In Starland. The story follows the tribulations of middle age for a man (Sing Sing breakout Clarence Maclin). Maclean will play a young artist who turns things around for him. Ray Panthaki (The Serpent Queen) directs. Currently finishing production in Mississippi.
Dexter: New Blood’s very own Julia Jones has been cast in period epic The Weight, alongside Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe. Set in 1930s Oregon during the height of The Great Depression, a battle-scarred veteran (Hawke) takes a dangerous job smuggling a fortune in gold across the wilderness to save what remains of his family. 17 Again editor Padraic McKinley is set to direct The Weight, with filming beginning next month.
Prime Video’s Viking drama Bloodaxe casts Jessica Madsen, best known as a Regina George-type antagonist character in Netflix’s Bridgerton. Madsen will play Gunnhild, Mother of Kings and wife to Viking raider Erik Bloodaxe (played by Xavier Molyneux). Production begins in Ireland end of July.
Emilie Bierre, the French Canadian actress who broke out in Berlin Generation’s A Colony (2018, trailer), joins Lice starring Emile Hirsch, Justin Long and Kevin Connolly about a parasitic lice outbreak sends a high school into military lockdown. The shoot just wrapped in Canada.
Mini tidbit:
Gailard Sartain has passed away at 81. Known for playing the cruel Sheriff in Mississippi Burning, whose open racism startles Gene Hackman and a young Willem Dafoe (clip). Sartain was better known for the comedy sketch series Hee Haw.
Yonas Kibreab, the voice star of Pixar’s Elio, will voice Pinocchio in the new indie animated film Pinocchio and the Water of Life.
European film icon Lea Massari has died at 91. Italian cinema’s greatest diva, Massari, appeared in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) and Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart (1971, clip). A truly celebrated performer.
Scott Speedman will star in ABC’s pilot, RJ Decker, from Rob Doherty (creator/showrunner: CBS’s Elementary). The series centers on a “disgraced newspaper photographer and ex-con who starts over as a private investigator.”
Netflix’s Emily in Paris officially casts Thalia Besson to reprise her role as Genevieve, the sweet but calculated wannabe fashion designer, for its upcoming 5th season.
FESTIVALS
Sand City, premiering at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, centers on a Bangladeshi entrepreneur who wants to build a glass factory. The film is less a guidebook on starting your own business and more a metaphysical reflection on the elemental forces that drive us to achieve greatness (trailer). The framing is quite exquisite.
Aura Entertainment has acquired Doin’ It, a sex-ed comedy starring and co-written by YouTuber Lilly Singh in her first lead film role. Directed by Sara Zandieh, the film follows a shy teacher navigating cultural taboos. Premiered at SXSW, it hits U.S. theaters September 19.
A distributor acquires a film in which she stars. In an odd but amazing move, Jess Jacobs, my year at Tisch in the acting division, who went on to form Joint Venture, a new distribution company led by Vinay Singh (former CEO of Archer Gray - prod co: Nightbitch), has picked up If You See Something.
Synopsis:
In the throes of a new love, an Iraqi immigrant seeking political asylum and an ambitious American woman (Jess Jacobs) start to build their life together in New York. When a crisis strikes, they are forced to navigate its impact on their relationship.
The film premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival in 2024 and counts Doug Liman as an EP.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Uptown Funk! Ever wonder what happened to the director behind the Uptown Funk music video with a wild 5.6 billion views on YouTube? Well, that director, Cameron Duddy, is making their directorial debut with Cowboy.
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