Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Disney. Paramount. Liam Neeson.
Let’s go!
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Disney Takes over Cinemacon 2025.
With their first big swing of the year, Brave New World did not hit high marks, and Snow White's many controversies led it to bomb.
Disney is a bit on the back foot here, but when it comes to next moves, they came to Cinemacon with a little something for everybody, starting off very Marvel heavy but finishing with some heartpounding Avatar 3 excitement.
Marvel:
Thunderbolts*: Next up to bat in theaters, the cast showed up in person with growing anticipation and great test screenings. Could this put Marvel back on track? They showed a fun featurette about stunts. In theaters May 2nd.
Fantastic Four: First Steps: They showed a clip of the sometimes-friend-sometimes-foe Silver Surfer, played by Julia Garner. Release date July 25.
Avengers: Doomsday: Kevin Feige sent a message from on set at Pinewood to confirm that shooting was underway.
Disney:
Lilo & Stitch: Looks like a near carbon copy of the animated version. They showed a fun new clip. In theaters May 23.
Elio: Zoe Saldana introduced a new clip and talked a bit about her role as an Alien Aunty. Release date June 20.
Freakier Friday: Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis both made appearances and unveiled a new clip. They also promise something called “double swaps.” Release date Aug. 8.
Zootopia 2: Nick and Judy go to police partner therapy in a sneak peek; their therapist is voiced by Quinta Bunson. Release date Nov. 26.
20th Century:
Deliver Me From Nowhere: Jeremy White speaks on the film, and a clip shows him for the first time as the Boss Bruce Springsteen.
Predator Badlands: Elle Fanning claims she teams up with a Predator in this fun twist of horror sci-fi. We got a nice first look, too. Release date Nov. 7.
Avatar Fire & Ash: Disney seems very hopeful and excited about this one, you can feel the energy. They showed a sneak peek that showed off the new Ash Tribe. Release date: Dec 19.
Searchlight:
War of the Roses: The remake starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman dropped a trailer. These two are whip-smart, and it will be great to see them duke it out in the battle of divorce. Release date Aug. 29.
This a pretty exciting slate, with wide appeal to a wider audience than we may have expected from them even a couple of years ago.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
James Gunn's Superman lays it all out on the table, releasing nearly five minutes of footage.
Paramount drops a bundle of new announcements at CinemaCon.
Universal TV’s Head of Production Jerry DiCanio is retiring.
M3GAN 2.0 is back in a trailer.
LA Sound Stage occupancy declined by 63% in 2024.
Peyton Manning's Omaha Productions has signed a deal with 20th Television.
The White Lotus composer will not return for the 4th season.
Meryl Streep is in talks to play Aslan the Great Lion in Greta Gerwig’s Narnia.
Nathan Fielder returns with Season 2 of Max’s The Rehearsal.
Maika Monroe (Longlegs) has joined the cast of indie drama Place to Be.
Hulu has dropped some tantalizing photos of Nicole Kidman-lead Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2.
Holt McCallany (The Iron Claw) will co-star in Clean Hands.
François Ozon (dir: Swimming Pool) is back with When Fall is Coming.
First-time director, Victoria DeMartin, casts Alec Baldwin in The Cutting Room Floor.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Supermixed: Gunn's Superman lays it all out on the table, releasing nearly five minutes of footage. Now, with a fully finished CGI Krypto that actually looks like a dog. We also got to live a bit more in Gunn's world. Though it is framed in the violence of a battered Superman, it's very warm, colorful, and uplifting. Krypto is cute, maybe too cute, and the new Superbots have jokes. It's very Guardians of the Galaxy, but is that what DC needs right now? Is that strong enough to launch a whole series, a whole universe? I don't know. If there is one thing this Silver Age comic homage has going for it, it's that every frame is filled with a hopefulness that we have not gotten in movies in a very long time, and maybe that's what we need right now.
Superman is in theaters on July 11th.
Paramount showed up in full force to Cinemacon with its slate.
They showed off a bunch of trailers/footage for their new releases:
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning - Tom Cruise stars - Release date: May 23
The Naked Gun reboot - starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson - trailer: Liam can do comedy! - Release date: Aug 1
Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman - starring Channing Tatum - Release date: Oct 3
Edgar Wright’s The Running Man - starring Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, and Colman Domingo - Release date: Nov 7
They also spoke to a few projects in production:
Children of Blood and Bone, shooting in South Africa
Heart of the Beast starring Brad Pitt
Tidbits:
Universal TV’s Head of Production Jerry DiCanio is retiring. He is responsible for The Office, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Place. Right now, he oversees more than 40 comedies and dramas like the award-winning Hacks and the late-night show SNL. Joining UTV in 1994, DiCanio will leave behind a legendary career that has lasted decades when he officially retires on May 31st.
The warrior-robot princess is back. At least, that’s what one of the deranged fans says in the M3GAN 2.0 trailer that sees M3GAN set on a rabid killing spree. M3GAN is the type of movie Blumhouse/Universal revel in. A responsibly budgeted $12M horror pays off with 15x box office of $180M. Making up for their last 3 to 4 films. Robots are in the zeitgeist, and this one has the style (trailer).
Mini Tidbits:
LAFilm’s recent study shows how Sound Stage occupancy declined in 2024 by 63% after a decline of 69% in 2023. One bright spot is that feature film shoots increased from 88 projects in 2018 to 90 in 2023.
Warner Brothers threatens Uwe Boll. Apparently, Warner Bros didn't like the name of his newest movie, The Dark Knight. I assume it was a bit like this. Anyway, Boll has now officially changed the name to Citizen Vigilante, but it is still mired in a bit of controversy as it is the first return to film for the embattled Armie Hammer.
Studios are in talks to reinstate the 45+ day theatrical window before tossing their movies on VOD. This would be good news for theaters and filmmakers as the theatrical window post-COVID has shrunk to an abyss.
The music in White Lotus is unforgettably foreboding. Sadly, the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who also scored Babygirl and Smile, has left the show after a creative disagreement. Listen to his full, uncut score here.
Fathom Events tore a hole through the box office last weekend with The Chosen: Last Supper — Part 1, opening at $11.5M. Now, Fathom sets the release for a bunch of classics on the big screen: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (June 15/18), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 50th Anniversary (July 13/16), and Sunset Boulevard 75th Anniversary (August 3-4).
Peyton Manning's Omaha Productions has signed a deal with 20th Television to develop scripted projects like Chad Powers but is looking at expanding its content beyond sports programming.
Amazon MGM has Road House 2 in the works, with Jake Gyllenhaal returning. Director Doug Liman, who admonished Amazon for not releasing the film theatrically, will not return. Instead, Guy Ritchie is in negotiations to direct. He previously directed Gyllenhaal in The Covenant (2023).
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Meryl Streep, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Streep is in talks to play Aslan the Great Lion in Greta Gerwig’s Narnia movie.
Gerwig actually signed the contract for this before Barbie debuted in theaters, bringing in $1.44bn. So now she has the cache to pull acting legends like Streep into a mystical role.
Aslan, the guiding lion for the children in Narnia, was last voiced by Liam Neeson in Disney’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) who takes a bite out of Tilda Swinton (clip).
Steep is one of the greats, and although she hasn’t played many magical creatures, just The Witch in Into the Woods (2014), we revel in her as an empathy engine. Our favorite Streep moment? Watching her agonize over whether to give her boyfriend’s sweater to Robert DeNiro in Deer Hunter (clip).
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God of weaponized cringe, Nathan Fielder returns with Season 2 of his hyper meta, maybe real, maybe not, reality show, psychological experiment, The Rehearsal. Season 2's new trailer seems to focus on Nathan's "hobby” of studying commercial airline crashes and a failed program to roleplay emergency exercises. But just like last time, things quickly veer into a strange mix of the surreal and just the authentic weirdness he can bring out in people. Blowing your mind on Max on 4/20.
Tidbits:
No stranger to genre films, Maika Monroe has joined the cast of indie drama Place to Be from Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundrucźo (dir. Pieces of a Woman). Her role has not yet been revealed.
Carrie-Anne Moss with a gun. That’s all I needed to see in the poster for Fubar Season 2 to have me hooked. She plays Arnold Schwarzenegger’s German spy ex-lover who is deadset on destroying him in the world. So it’ll definitely get spicy. Blazes onto Netflix on June 12.
Take a look at Nicole Kidman’s Nine Perfect Strangers Season 2 and Holt McCallany’s hands:
https://theindustry.co/p/nicole-kidman-holt-mccallany
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
François Ozon is obsessed with age. Particularly the dynamics that play out when two people of differing ages become entangled. This was true in his Young & Beautiful (2013) and the remake Swimming Pool, both official selections at Cannes. Now he has When Fall is Coming, which is about a grandma who cooks up some poisonous mushrooms to preserve her relationship with her grandson. The trailer makes everyone seem innocent. Music Box Film releases in the fall.
First-time director, Victoria DeMartin, casts Alec Baldwin in her feature, The Cutting Room Floor.
Here’s the synopsis
An aspiring film editor's big break turns chaotic when the movie she's editing mysteriously begins to reflect her own life, making reality and fiction increasingly indistinguishable.
Sounds delightfully Black Mirror-esque.
Hats off to DeMartin, who previously directed a handful of shorts and served as an assistant to director Gideon Raff on the Chris Evans film The Red Sea Diving Resort (2019). Her script won the Golden Script Fellowship competition.
Shooting this summer. More info on the project here.
David Mamet is back with a Shia LaBeouf movie, an adaptation of his play Henry Johnson.
Here’s the light synopsis:
A man seeks his moral compass while meeting authority figures, including his future cellmate Gene.
First look photo of LaBeouf here. Mamet’s last feature film he directed was Redbelt (2008). His best work is the play and subsequent screenplay for the acerbically sharp-witted Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Henry Johnson will premiere in LA on May 9th. The film will become available online here.
Three indie film tidbits: Daily Mail’s sale. Strictly Sexual. And Sundance “Hi!”
https://theindustry.co/p/strict-daily-mail-sundance
ON THIS DAY
1932. Anthony Perkins (Psycho) born in NYC.
That’s all for the week! See you Monday.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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New François Ozone?! I cannot wait. The trailer is super good.