Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Emmys winners, Oscars hopefuls. And a Happy Dance.
Let’s go!
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The 77th Emmys were last night.
The Pitt won Best Drama Series. The Studio won Best Comedy Series. Adolescence won Best Limited or Anthology Series.
Full breakdown here: https://theindustry.co/p/the-77th-emmy-winners.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Focus Features’ Hamnet wins TIFF’s People’s Choice Award.
Amazon MGM is developing cyber-thriller Mysteria.
Netflix acquires Christmas comedy South Pole Santa.
Sean Astin elected SAG-AFTRA president.
Bento Box co-founder Joel Kuwahara exits after 15 years.
Harvey Keitel–led action thriller The Wrecker sets Halloween release.
Lin Shaye returns for Insidious 6.
Bruce Dern joins John Francis Sullivan’s All Day Happy Dance.
Victor Rivas Rivers will guest star in The Pitt S2 as hospital CEO.
Tony Hale added to the cast of Hulu’s high-school comedy Don’t Get High.
Chris Parnell joins Netflix’s untitled golf comedy.
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is TIFF's first runner-up. Neon’s No Other Choice wins TIFF’s International People’s Choice Award.
$150M Saudi epic Desert Warrior to premiere at Zurich Film Festival.
Hungary selects László Nemes’ Orphan for Oscars. Ukraine picks 2000 Meters to Andriivka.
San Sebastian to close with Salma Hayek’s early film Midaq Alley (1995).
Netflix greenlights Call My Agent! movie, with creator Fanny Herrero scripting.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
TIFF announced its awards.
The Top Prize, The People’s Choice Award, went to Focus Features' Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao.
It’s worth noting, in the past 14 years, 13 TIFF winners were Oscar Best Picture nominated, with four winning (Nomadland, Green Book, 12 Years a Slave, The King's Speech).
I saw Hamnet at TIFF, and it has one of the best endings of a film that I’ve ever seen. I won’t spoil it here.
Jesse Buckley’s performance is a standout, tapping into the undercurrents of sadness so viscerally that you can feel the sorrow through the screen. She will likely score an Oscar nomination for her performance.
We don’t know if Hamnet will win Best Picture at the Oscars, but if it does, it would be director Chloé Zhao’s 2nd Best Picture win following Nomadland (2020). This would put her in an elite category of less than 10 directors who have directed two films that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture, including Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, and Billy Wilder.
Teaser for Hamnet. Release date: Thanksgiving.
A major project called Mysteria is coalescing at Amazon MGM. Here’s the line-up:
Dir: Craig Zobel (attached)
Compliance (2012)
Mare of Easttown (7 eps, 2021)
Star/Prod: Charlize Theron (attached)
Wri/Prod: Eric Heisserer
Arrival (2016)
Studio: Amazon MGM
No word on this other than it’s a cyber thriller.
Heisserer is one of the greatest minds in sci-fi adaptations. He took Arrival from a short story to one of the most emotionally complex, scientifically accurate, and visually astonishing sci-fi films of the decade.
Zobel, for his part, also directed a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film, Z for Zachariah, which played at Sundance in 2015. He brings a humanism to his directing style that burrows into the psychology of his characters.
It seems like a good partnership if it comes to fruition.
Tidbits:
Netflix is taking on the holidays with South Pole Santa, a Christmas movie acquired by the streamer to be penned by Chris Bruno and David Lee. The filmmaking duo created the animated comedy show Human Discoveries on Facebook. SNL’s Colin Jost is attached to produce South Pole Santa, with its plot being kept under wraps.
From a hobbit in The Shire to the President of SAG-AFTRA. Sean Astin has officially been selected to take over the position, winning 79% of the vote. The Rudy (1993) and Lord of the Rings actor has served on the SAG-AFTRA national and LA Local boards since 2021. Succeeding Fran Drescher, Astin will serve his two-year term beginning immediately.
In addition to the announcement of Astin, former president Fran Drescher’s Robin Hood fund is finally happening. In the works since before the 2023 strike, the SAG-AFTRA Producers Success Bonus Distribution Fund will serve as a secondary income stream, enabling union performers at any level to benefit from the success of streaming projects in which they were involved.
Mini Tidbit:
The co-founder of Fox’s Bento Box Entertainment (Bob’s Burgers, Krapopolis), Joel Kuwahara, is exiting his role. The animation house was started back in 2009, and there is no word yet on where Kuwahara will go.
Release dates:
The Wrecker
Cast: Tyrese Gibson, Harvey Keitel, and Danny Trejo
Dir: Art Camacho (Ruthless starring Dermot Mulroney)
Release: Oct 31st
Clips/Teasers:
Universal Pictures’ The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Release: April 3, 2026
All The Walls Came Down
Premiere: Telluride
Netflix’s The Witcher (S4)
Release: Oct 30th
Warner Bros.’ Practical Magic 2, starring Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, has wrapped.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Lin Shaye is getting ready to reprise her iconic role as psychic Elise Rainer in Insidious 6, the newest installment from Blumhouse, Sony Pictures Screen Gems, and distributor Stage 6 Films.
The untitled Insidious project continues Shaye’s long-standing association with the franchise as she has appeared in every chapter so far, including the recent Insidious: The Red Door (2023), which reached a franchise high box office of $189M. Her role as the compassionate, fearless, and clairvoyant Elise Rainer acts as the franchise’s moral core and provides a human anchor amid the series’ escalating supernatural terror (clip).
Shaye, despite breaking out with horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), has been in several memorable Farrelly comedies like There’s Something about Mary (1998, clip) and the Dumb and Dumber movies.
The plot for the newest Blumhouse project is being kept tightly under wraps, with production set to begin in Australia. Insidious 6 is slated for an Aug. 2026 release.
Tidbits:
Bruce Dern has joined the cast of John Francis Sullivan’s coming-of-age film All Day Happy Dance, playing “Gramps,” the steadfast patriarch in its family drama. Dern received an Oscar nomination for his role as a cantankerous father in Nebraska (2013, trailer), with his newest role continuing his late-career streak of character-driven roles that highlight his sharp wit and commanding presence. All Day Happy Dance is currently in production.
Victor Rivas Rivers, best known for his comic intensity in Blood In, Blood Out (1993), will guest star in The Pitt Season 2. He will play the CEO of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. So we may see him develop the plotline of Noah Wyle, ragging on his boss for their lack of funding.
Don’t Get High, the new comedy from Hulu, Mythic Quest co-creator Megan Gantz, and 20th Television, announces its large ensemble cast. Two-time Emmy winner Tony Hale (Veep, Arrested Development) leads a cast of younger talent for the upcoming high school-set sitcom.
Netflix’s untitled golf series adds three to its cast, joining Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon. Fellow Saturday Night Live alum Chris Parnell will play a jerky PGA Tour board member. In addition to Parnell, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s David Hornsby and Katelyn Tarver (HBO’s Ballers) have also joined the 10-episode series.
FESTIVALS
The rest of the TIFF winners:
Frankenstein (1st runner-up)
Dir: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Oscar Isaac
Premiere: Venice Film Festival
Distributor: Netflix
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2nd runner up)
Dir: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner, Andrew Scott, Mila Kunis, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Josh O'Connor
Premiere: TIFF
Distributor: Netflix
International People’s Choice Awards:
No Other Choice
Dir: Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave)
Distributor: Neon
Neon also had the first runner-up, with Sentimental Value, which also took 2nd place at Cannes, where it premiered.
Check out the full list of TIFF winners here.
Focus Features, Neon, and Netflix each have two winners.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Despite countless obstacles, Desert Warrior, Saudi Arabia’s first major Hollywood film, will have its world premiere at the Zurich Film Festival later this month.
The $150M historical epic starring Anthony Mackie and Ben Kingsley was originally shot in 2021 but was delayed due to “creative challenges”. Director Rupert Wyatt (dir. Rise of the Planet of the Apes) even exited the film at one point but returned to the project shortly after.
From Saudi studio MBC (The Voice of Hind Rajab), the film is set in pre-Islamic Arabia and tells a war story between tribes and the Persian-Sasanian Empire.
It’ll be interesting to see the reception in Zurich for the long-awaited and incredibly ambitious film.
Hungary has selected Orphan (clip), the third feature from László Nemes (dir: Son of Saul) as its official submission for the Oscars’ international film category. Set in Budapest in 1957, the film follows a young boy whose world is turned upside down when a man claims to be his true father.
Ukraine’s official selection is 2000 Meters to Andriivka (trailer) from the Oscar-winning director Mstyslav Chernov (20 Days in Mariupol). Using drones and on-the-ground footage, the film shows an intimate look at modern warfare following a Ukrainian platoon.
The final day for a country to submit a selection for the 98th Academy Awards is Oct. 1st.
19 other countries have selected their Oscar submissions. Check them all out here:
https://theindustry.co/p/oscars-2026-international-feature
Tidbits:
A24 is close to closing rights on Chainsaw Massacre. Estate representative Verve was actively fielding offers for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, which it has repped since 2017. It looks like the process may be coming to a close with A24. Director JT Mollner and producer Roy Lee, riding high off their indie hit Strange Darling, would lock the deal as a series adaptation. More on this when it closes.
The San Sebastian film festival will close with Midaq Alley (1995), or as it’s sometimes known, The Alley of Miracles. Notably, this was Salma Hayek’s second-ever film role. Sony will re-release the film for its 30th anniversary in Mexico and Latin America on Oct. 23. Watch the trailer.
Four Seasons. Eight spinoffs. And a movie. France’s popular Call My Agent series, which features actors like Jean Dujardin, Isabelle Huppert, and Juliette Binoche, is getting a Netflix movie. The show’s creator, Fanny Herrero, is scripting while Émilie Noblet (Dir: Paramount+’s Zorro) is directing. The story will pick up half a decade after the talent agency closed.
Mini Tidbit:
Co-creator of Netflix’s Adolescence, Jack Thorne, is continuing his hugely successful year by being elected president of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB).
ON THIS DAY
1995. Se7en premieres in New York.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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