Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Dr. Seuss
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Nolan’s Odyssey, Tarantino’s play, and The Places You’ll Go!
Let’s go!
If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Christopher Nolan’s next film, The Odyssey, will be shot in Favignana, an island off of Sicily.
Quentin Tarantino’s next project is a play. He likes theater audiences better.
Warner Bros. Pictures Animation has just announced an adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
Align Group (financier: Sundance’s Rabbit Trap, Jimpa, The Thing with Feathers) raised $120 M.
Former Disney executive Jennifer Rogers Doyle is now EVP of franchise management for Sony Pictures Television.
HBO has released the trailer for The White Lotus Season 3.
Noah Hawley's new prequel series Alien Earth just dropped a chaotic and dizzying teaser.
Jeremy Allen White is not forgetting his TV roots as he is set to star and EP in a new Netflix limited series titled Enigma Variations.
Rebecca Hall is set to star in the A24 action thriller Onslaught, reuniting with her Godzilla x Kong director.
Jackie Chan’s latest film, The Shadow’s Edge, has completed filming in Macau.
Dennis Quaid stars as the infamous “Happy Face Killer” in the Paramount+ drama Happy Face.
The Wedding Banquet and Peter Hujar’s Day premiere at Sundance.
Oscar-nominated Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s sophomore film Happy Holidays has been acquired by Film Movement.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Christopher Nolan fans: his highly-anticipated next film, an adaptation of The Odyssey, has selected its official filming location, Favignana (Goat Island). According to scholars, this is where Odysseus' decade-long journey in Homer’s classic epic took place, located off of Sicily’s northwest coast (photos).
Here’s The Odyssey’s (2026) official synopsis:
Follows Odysseus in his perilous journey home after the Trojan War, showcasing his encounters with Polyphemus, the Sirens, Circe, and finishing with his reunion with his wife, Penelope.
What I’m most interested in for this project is how Nolan, a master of manipulating time across his filmography from the recursive nature of Memento (2000) to the layers of varying temporal dream states in Inception (2010), is how he will render Odysseus’s 10-year journey home.
The film will shoot in the next two months and premiere theatrically on July 17th, 2026.
Quentin Tarantino fans: Tarantino’s next project is a play. The director, who popped by Sundance yesterday afternoon, stated:
“What the fuck is a movie that plays in four weeks and by the second week you watch it on television. I didn’t get into it [filmmaking] for diminishing returns… [theatergoers] pay a lot of fucking money to get into that seat.”
He continued:
“There’s no fucking taping it, there’s no cell phone, you own the audience for that time. They are all yours, they are in the palm of your hand. It’s not just about doing art, it’s about wowing them, it’s about giving them a great night out. This to me is fucking existing. It’s the last frontier.”
No word on what play he is writing, but I’m imagining something like the audience getting sprayed with blood, like the ending from a certain film this year.
If it’s a big hit, Tarantino said he could adapt it into his last film. He previously decided to part ways with what was supposed to be his final film, The Movie Critic.
Dr. Seuss fans: Warner Bros. Pictures Animation has just announced an adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go! The team is stellar:
Dir: Jon M. Chu (Wicked)
Co-Dir: Jill Culton (DreamWorks’ Abominable)
Writer: Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit)
Prod Company: Bad Robot (J.J. Abrams)
Original Songs: Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land)
For those of you who missed out on this wonderful bedtime story, it follows a young adventurer on their travels.
Here’s the opening line:
“Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!”
Universal Pictures had the last animated Dr. Seuss book adaptation with The Grinch (2018). It soared to great heights with $512.7 M worldwide off a $67.6 M budget. Before that, The Lorax (2012) generated $349 M worldwide off a $70 M budget.
You won’t have to search high and low; Warner’s animated musical will drop into IMAX on March 17, 2028.
Align Group, financing partner of three films at Sundance this year, raises $120 M.
Here’s their Sundance 2025 premieres (and their role):
Rabbit Trap (producer, provided 80% of budget)
Cast: Dev Patel
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch
Jimpa (EP)
Cast: Olivia Colman and John Lithgow
Adrian Politowski, the CEO of Align, discussed their ideal films:
“Typically we target projects between $5 and $25 M… Our involvement is mainly financial but we can also help on the festival strategy and give some creative input.”
They will put the $120 M towards international features and TV drama.
Tidbit:
Former Disney executive Jennifer Rogers Doyle is taking on a new role as EVP of franchise management for Sony Pictures Television. Doyle will be responsible for leading and overseeing the franchise strategy and maximizing revenue opportunities for IP like Netflix’s Cobra Kai, Prime Video’s The Boys, and Apple TV+’s For All Mankind, among others. Doyle, while at Disney, has primarily worked on preschool properties like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (2006-2016) and Sofia the First (2012-2018).
What happens in Thailand… HBO has released the trailer for The White Lotus Season 3. Set in Thailand, the season follows a new group of affluent, conflicted vacationers at a luxurious resort. There are some exciting returning characters, such as Natasha Rothwell from season one and a slowly unraveling Jason Isaacs.
Check out the trailer here. And by the looks of it, we get more statue shots!
White Lotus Season 3 begins streaming February 16.
Mini Tidbit:
Noah Hawley's new prequel series Alien Earth just dropped a chaotic and dizzying teaser. We follow what looks like a face hugger as it careens into the sides of a spaceship plunging towards Earth.
Alien: Earth, a prequel set 40 years before Ridley Scott's Alien, debuts this summer.
Paramount is already quashing yesterday’s $13.5 bn all-cash, 11th-hour bid from Project Rise Partners (PRP) to acquire the company.
Paramount stated:
“Paramount is bound by its agreement with Skydance Media, and there will not be any engagement with PRP in contravention of such agreement.”
Next up in the acquisition saga: regulators as they continue to scrutinize the deal.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Jeremy Allen White is not forgetting his TV roots as he is set to star and EP in a new Netflix limited series titled Enigma Variations. Based on the 2017 bisexual romance novel by André Acimon, (wri: Call Me By Your Name) the series is currently in the early stages of development.
Official Book Synopsis:
Charts the life of a man named Paul (White), whose loves remain as consuming and as covetous throughout his adulthood as they were in his adolescence.
White is great at displaying chronic instability in The Bear, teetering from self-confidence to self-doubt, as the above role calls for switching the object of desire from a perfect restaurant to a perfect love.
This casting makes sense beyond just White’s impressive range; he already has a relationship with Netflix as his breakout role in the unhinged Showtime drama, Shameless (2011-2021), found new life on the steamer (as many shows do) with all 11 seasons available to watch.
Media Res (The Morning Show) is producing the series with Amanda Kate Shuman (wri: Wheel of Time) serving as writer, executive producer, and showrunner and Oliver Hermanus (Moffie) on board to direct.
If you are enjoying the newsletter and see its value, please consider supporting the newsletter by becoming a premium subscriber https://theindustry.co/subscribe
Rebecca Hall’s Day. Hall is set to star in the A24 action thriller Onslaught, reuniting with her Godzilla x Kong director Adam Wingard and co-star Dan Stevens.
We don't know much about Hall's role in Onslaught in general, but it's said she will share screen time with Stevens, who will play a German scientist, with the film revolving around an unexplained threat that escapes from a military base.
Not uncertain ground for Hall, who plays Scientist Ilene Andrews in the Godzilla franchise, kind of a Jane Goodall type whose adoptive daughter forms a special bond with King Kong.
Hall is having a very good day, as she just starred in the Sundance premiere of Peter Hujar’s Day. She plays writer Linda Rosenkrantz, who decides to interview Peter Hujar (played magnificently by Ben Whishaw) about what he did yesterday in extreme detail.
Throughout, Hall, despite having a fraction of the dialogue of Whishaw, soaks him in with her eyes, dashing between cajoling and fawning. It’s a masterclass in active listening.
We’re excited to see Hall flicker between mega-budget sci-fi and indie cinema.
Dennis Quaid stars as Keith Hunter Jesperson, the infamous “Happy Face Killer,” in the Paramount+ drama Happy Face. This series is based on the true stories and recollections of Jeperson's actual daughter, and there is a true crime edge.
It's an interesting twist to see Quaid go so dark. Usually, he is known for more family man roles, but recently, he has inhabited a few morally questionable characters; his network head in The Substance was a pretty slimy individual punctuated by a scene involving shellfish that truly felt invasive.
Though perhaps playing to the form of the true-crime format, Quaid is relatively understated in the Happy Face trailer, but his meekness is a perfect shroud for the double life the real Happy Face killer lived as he claimed the lives of at least eight women.
Tidbits:
Jackie Chan’s latest film, The Shadow’s Edge, directed by Larry Yang, has completed filming in Macau. The action thriller features Chan as a retired surveillance expert, and the movie reunites Chan with Tony Leung Ka Fai (The Myth) after nearly 20 years. Chan, 70 years old, looks bloody but happy in this first look.
Peacock has acquired the new drama The Five-Star Weekend, headlined by Jennifer Garner, to star and EP. The upcoming series will adapt Elin Hilderbrand’s 2023 novel of the same name that follows a famed food influencer who suffers a devastating loss. Between Garner having not been on our screens for far too long (besides in commercials) and The Five-Star Weekend being written, produced, and adapted by This is Us producer Bekah Brunstetter makes this very promising.
Elliot Page’s Pageboy Productions is partnering with Bell Media, a Canadian media giant, to develop and produce original scripted TV series. The Umbrella Academy star and Canadian native’s company is behind films like the Page led Close to You (2023) and the TIFF film Backspot (2023).
FESTIVALS
A couple of great premieres today at Sundance.
Dir: Andrew Ahn (Fire Island, Spa Night)
Cast: Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Release date: April 18th
Synopsis:
A gay man makes a deal with his lesbian friend: a green-card marriage for him, in exchange for in vitro fertilization treatments for her. Plans evolve as Min's grandmother surprises them with a Korean wedding banquet.
Based on Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet (1993).
Dir: Ira Sachs (Passages)
Cast: Ben Whishaw, Rebecca Hall
Synopsis:
Conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and Linda Rosenkrantz from 1974 sheds light on New York's vibrant downtown art world and the introspective journey of an artist's life.
First look still of a very pensive Whishaw.
Behind the scenes at Sundance, everyone is anxious that no distributor has picked up a single title as the festival heads into the sixth day (at the time of publication). Will the Alison Brie/Dave Franco body-horror film Together be picked up? Or will it be the unanimously loved Twinless? Or any of the films with major movie stars? Someone needs to lay out some money and make a decision soon, or otherwise, it’ll be a frightening sign of the times that there is no longer a market for the Sundance variety of indie cinema.
Tidbit:
International sales agent Magnify (Christmas Eve in Miller's Point) has acquired worldwide rights to Yi Jing’s directorial debut, The Botanist, ahead of its Berlin Film Festival premiere. The coming-of-age tale, set in a remote village in China’s Xinjiang region, follows a friendship that unfolds into what’s described as a dreamlike allegory that weaves between reality and botanical fantasy.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Announced out of the Sundance Film Festival, Utopia co-founders Robert Schwartzman and J. Cole Harper launched their new tech platform, PowerFlix. The platform combines software with real-world distribution services to provide an end-to-end solution to allow filmmakers to customize and control their film’s release globally. Utopia has most recently helped back The Last Showgirl with Roadside Attractions.
Veteran film executive Zygi Kamasa, founder of True Brit Entertainment, is spearheading a revival of British horror. His upcoming UK release, The Dreadful, stars Sophie Turner and Kit Harington. The setting is most interesting; it will take place during the 15th-century War of the Roses. Currently, the film is in post-production.
On the tail of his successful Whiskey on the Rocks, French-Swedish producer Patrick Nebout is developing Learning to Fly, a six-part Cold War satirical spy thriller inspired by Mathias Rust’s daring 1987 flight to Moscow’s Red Square. While not confirmed, it looks like it will land on Disney+ and Hulu as well.
Oscar-nominated Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s sophomore film Happy Holidays has been acquired by Film Movement (Girls Town) following a prize-filled festival run after its Venice premiere last year, where it won the Best Screenplay award. A very timely movie, Happy Holidays is a panoramic drama giving a first hand glimpse into the life of a contemporary Palestinian family in the most authentic and unforgettable way. Film Movement is planning a theatrical release for Happy Holidays at some point this year.
Kenya’s official entry for the best international feature film category, Nawi, has been taken by Atlas International Film (The Last House on the Left) for worldwide rights. The heart-wrenching and powerful drama follows the titular Nawi (played by Michelle Lemuya Ikeny), a 13-year-old Kenyan girl who, despite yearning to go to high school, is being forced into an arranged marriage.
ON THIS DAY
1973. 30th Golden Globes: The Godfather, Marlon Brando, and Liv Ullmann win.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram | X
Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co
