Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
Superman’s Spy, Paramount’s Games, and a Zombie.
Let’s go!
Jason Bateman and David Harbour play two sad dads whose fate intertwines as a weather reporter and his sign language interpreter.
The show navigates their dual infatuations, butting up against their middle-aged inertia.
It’s a murder mystery, a bromance gone wrong, and a midlife-crisis noir.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Henry Cavill and Kevin Hart team for Netflix’s untitled spy-action comedy.
Paramount Skydance launches Paramount Games Studio as a core content pillar.
James Mangold returns to Cop Land with a Paramount+ series adaptation.
Jay Hoag replaces Reed Hastings as Netflix’s board chairman.
Jafar Panahi is sentenced to prison in Iran over It Was Just an Accident.
Amazon taps Justin Dudek to lead unscripted/doc production.
Hulu develops The Cable Guy pilot with Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr.
Victoria Pedretti shines in Tribeca postpartum drama The Last Day.
IFC and Shudder acquire Alex Goyette’s dog horror feature Breeder.
Kino Lorber takes U.S. rights to doc Black Zombie.
Criterion Channel picks up The Aggressives and its 25-year-later follow-up.
Yesterday’s correct answer: The Pit and the Pendulum, Poe's short story.
95% got it correct.
Bateman, Harbour & Linda Cardellini are up to no good - click here for more info.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Man of Steel and Hart. Henry Cavill will star alongside Kevin Hart in a Netflix spy-action comedy. Based on a short story by Sean Lewis (Author: King Spawn), the film follows two rival spies who meet at a Lamaze class. With their wives becoming fast friends, the two undercover agents must find a way to become partners and fathers at the same time. Directed by McG (Charlie’s Angels franchise) and produced by Shawn Levy (Deadpool & Wolverine).
We’ve seen Cavill play a spy multiple times, from his stylized performance in Argylle (2024) to a brutal CIA assassin in Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018). He has the charisma, the charm, and the build for a lethal secret agent. Kevin Hart is also no foreigner to espionage. He played a high school athlete-turned-boring accountant who gets dragged into being a spy by a formerly bullied high school friend (Dwayne Johnson) in the action comedy Central Intelligence (2016).
So we can expect a collision between the suave James Bond-esque action of Henry Cavill and the fish-out-of-water comedy of Kevin Hart (Big-and-Small duo clip).
Two cases are percolating as PSKY gets ready to close its acquisition of WBD.
First, Delaware’s Magistrate Judge Christian Wright is demanding that the previous leadership of Paramount (e.g., Shari Redstone’s Paramount) hand over all emails, texts, and internal comms that lead to the acquisition by Skydance. The case is brought by investors like the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Retirement Fund, claiming Redstone’s deal with Skydance cheated them out of money.
Meanwhile, a multi-state Attorney General-led lawsuit is being constructed to block the Paramount - WBD merger.
Only time will tell if any of it makes a material difference in stopping these colossal forces from combining. Full breakdown of the deal here: https://theindustry.co/p/paramount-wins-warner-bros
At the same time, Paramount is tapping into gaming with Paramount Games Studio, a merger of their two existing game studios: Skydance Interactive and Skydance New Media.
Paramount is naming the new gaming studio their “core pillar” of content strategy.
So why is Paramount doing this? The global AAA games market is valued around $197bn in 2025 revenue (vs. the film industry’s $113bn). One of the most successful AAA titles, Red Dead Redemption 2, had a budget of around $500M and generated an estimated $5bn in revenue and sold over 85M copies globally (vs. Avatar’s $2.92bn on a $387M budget).
With the strength of Paramount’s IP, the gaming studio has the potential to be a major branch of their content.
The company has named Tony Driscoll, the creator of Fortnite’s Creator Ecosystem and Economy at Epic Games, as the President of Paramount Games Studio.
Tidbits:
James Mangold is heading back to his roots with Paramount+ greenlighting a series take on his Miramax movie Cop Land (1997). Joining Paramount+’s current land of lands, MobLand and Landman, the new series will reimagine the sleepy New Jersey town populated by corrupt NYPD officers. The film version starred current Paramount+ royalty Sylvester Stallone alongside Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Ray Liotta, with the show version having big shoes to fill as it begins casting. Mangold will direct from a script co-written by him and Robert Levine (The Old Man).
From almost being ousted last year, Jay Hoag (founder of TCV, early investor: Netflix, Facebook, Airbnb) becomes Netflix’s board chairman. Hoag is replacing Reed Hastings (Netflix co-founder and ex-CEO), who has stepped down. Full details here. Netflix also doubled down on their “no theatrical” stance. With Film Chief Dan Lin stating, “There is a group of filmmakers who still want theatrical. Those are filmmakers that we’ve accepted we just won’t work with.”
Mini Tidbits:
Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to 1 year in prison by the Iranian government for his Palme d’Or-winning film It Was Just an Accident (2025). He will also have a 2-year travel ban. He’s a hero for what he’s doing.
Amazon’s Jenn Levy (EP: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) tasks Justin Dudek (Prod: Bear Grylls: Face the Wild) to lead all of its unscripted and doc series production teams.
Christopher Nolan’s biggest epic yet was also AMC’s highest-ever advance PLF ticket sale since 2022 for a major studio movie. Standard The Odyssey tickets will go on sale later this summer, before its premiere in theaters everywhere on July 17.
Music Video for Film:
Pixar’s Toy Story 5
“I Knew It, I Knew You” by Taylor Swift
Film release: June 19
First Look:
Netflix’s 3D animation Ghostbusters: Night Shift
EP: Dan Aykroyd
Release: 2027
Release Dates:
Damai Entertainment’s Dear You
Chinese Box Office: $223M
Chinese Release: April 30
International Release: June 18
U.S. Release: TBD
Paramount+’s Lioness S3
Showrunner: Taylor Sheridan
Cast: Zoë Saldaña, Nicole Kidman
Release: August 2
YouTube’s animation Fred Has Problems
Producer: Steve Dildarian (HBO’s The Life & Times of Tim)
Release: July 1
Paramount+’s Among Us
Animated series
Cast: Yvette Nicole Brown, Elijah Wood
Release: June 5
Bateman, Harbour & Linda Cardellini are up to no good - click here for more info.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
New Girl? No, The Cable Guy! New Girl actors Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. are attached to star and EP a comedy pilot inspired by Ben Stiller’s cult classic comedy for Hulu.
The duo will star as versions of the original 1996 film’s leads, with Johnson as the boundaryless cableman Chip Douglass (played by Jim Carrey) and Wayans Jr. as his long-suffering neighbor Steven Stephens (played by Matthew Broderick).
Wayans Jr. and Johnson spent years perfecting their comedic chemistry on Fox’s New Girl, a rapport that should serve them well stepping into another mismatched friendship. The pilot also marks Sony TV’s return to Hulu for the first time in six years (Woke).
Tidbits:
You’s Victoria Pedretti is taking on her most emotional role yet in the Tribeca premiering The Last Day. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the film continues Pedretti’s streak of psychologically layered performances as she devastatingly plays a young mother navigating the grueling space of postpartum depression. Pedretti stars alongside Oscar-winning Alicia Vikander and Oscar-nominated Wagner Moura; the film is actively looking for U.S. distribution.
Staple British television actor Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) has died at 72. Whether guiding Buffy Summers as her sweet surrogate father figure, Rupert Giles, or as the smarmy billionaire on Ted Lasso, one of the show’s only unlikable characters, Head has a reliably captivating screen presence, capable of stealing any scene without ever seeming to try. Though the fan favorite Giles remained his signature role.
Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls), Patti LuPone (Agatha All Along), and Dan Bucatinsky (Scandal) join the cast of indie comedy August. The film follows a young, gay New Yorker (Nick Borenstein) who investigates the sudden death of his beloved therapist (Graham). The film has been selected for the 2026 Inside Out Toronto International Finance Forum and will be presented by Netflix.
The next John Wick spinoff, Caine, adds British actor Bill Nighy to its cast. The film will follow the titular blind assassin played by martial arts master and director Donnie Yen, and while Nighy’s role is unknown, we would love to see him channel another freaky villain like his terrifying Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Production is ongoing in Budapest.
Patrick Godfrey, most known for his role as Leonardo da Vinci in Ever After (1998), dies at 93. He also played Marius’ grandfather, Monsieur Gillenormand, in Les Misérables (2012).
Bateman, Harbour & Linda Cardellini are up to no good - click here for more info.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
Tribeca Festival Lisboa extends to 2028. Tribeca has renewed their partnership with Impresa Group (largest media conglomerate in Portugal). Their Portuguese indie film showcase will run for another three years, with their third edition kicking off Dec 9th - 13th 2026.
The general manager of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival, Shivani Pandya Malhotra, is exiting her role after five years.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
IFC nabs another dog horror. IFC (Distribution: Good Boy) and Shudder acquire Alex Goyette’s debut feature Breeder. The film follows a broke college student who gets lured by an eccentric poodle breeder to a remote ranch. It seems like the two companies want to continue their canine horror genre success — they distributed Good Boy (2025) together last year and earned $8.8M worldwide with only a $70,000 budget. Breeder world premiered a few days ago at Tribeca and will have its theatrical run this fall.
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker B.J. Golnick is making the leap into narrative storytelling with Brine, a Civil War-era supernatural thriller. Best known for directing the History Channel’s hit docuseries Hunting Hitler (2015-20), Golnick’s narrative film debut falls in line with his history-centered catalog, set to follow a family of Confederate deserters on the run who disappear into the mysterious Georgia marshlands.
Talk about a win for the new doc, Black Zombie. Kino Lorber takes US rights for the new doc. The feature-length directorial debut of Maya Annik Bedward, the doc unearths the origins of a fictional famous zombie. It premiered at SXSW and counts Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash as EP.
Before Mean Girls had a burn book, The Aggressives had a camera. The Criterion Channel has picked up the groundbreaking documentary The Aggressives (2005) over two decades since it first premiered at SXSW, along with its follow-up Beyond the Aggressives: 25 Years Later (2013). The films give an intimate look at the lives of trans men of color living in NYC, now available to stream.
Mini Tidbits:
Blue Fox Entertainment (Distribution: StudioCanal’s The Wolf and the Lion) acquires two iPic Theater locations in Westwood Village, Los Angeles, and Manhattan’s Fulton Market.
Joanna Klein (EP: CBS’ Matlock) joins Nina Tassler as SVP at Kismet Creative Group, a company with an overall deal with Sony Pictures Television. Klein was the SVP of Scripted Series at Lifetime Television and The CW.
ON THIS DAY
1984. Ghostbusters premieres.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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