Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Emmys’ Stats, TIFF’s Romance, and Vertical’s ascent.
Let’s go!
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THE INDUSTRY TLDR
77th Emmys drew 7.4M viewers, up 8% YoY.
Josh Goldstine, ex-WB marketing chief is in talks to join Paramount.
ESPN veteran Katina Arnold promoted to Disney SVP of Advertising Comms.
Famke Janssen leads One Second After, a sci-fi about EMP-triggered collapse.
Mary McDonnell joins Marvel’s Vision series on Disney+.
Fox’s Memory of a Killer casts Michaela McManus opposite Patrick Dempsey.
Dougray Scott to play Hans Christian Andersen in crime drama Fairytale Detective.
Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone won’t return in The Batman: Part II.
Veteran actress Paula Shaw (Freddy vs. Jason) dies at 84.
Row K acquires Charlie Harper, starring Emilia Jones, out of TIFF.
Vertical takes U.S. rights to The Astronaut with Kate Mara & Laurence Fishburne.
Melissa Miller Costanzo (All These Small Moments) begins production on Run.
Poland selects Agnieszka Holland’s Kafka for Oscars. Brazil submits Neon’s The Secret Agent.
Aardman expands Robin Robin into CGI preschool spinoff The Adventures of Robin Robin.
Sony Pictures Television extends Pay-One deal with Turkey’s Sinema TV.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Emmys viewership is up. Here’s how Sunday’s Emmys rank among previous years:
7.4M views (77th Emmys, 2025)
↑8% from last year
CBS (Network)
6.87M views (76th Emmys, 2024)
ABC (Network)
4.46M views (75th Emmys, 2024)
Fox (Network)
5.9M views (74th Emmys, 2022)
NBC (Network)
7.4M views (73rd Emmys, 2021)
CBS (Network)
That’s two big years for CBS, although pre-COVID the Emmys had 10.2M views in 2018 and 11.7M views in 2017. The 2015 Emmys were called out as having the “Worst ratings of all time” with “only” 11.9M views.
The best indicator for growth came from the livestream views on Paramount+. Although no data was provided, streams increased by 76% from 2021.
For comparison, the Oscars usually notch 2.5x more views but have followed a similar growth trend year to year:
2025: 19.7 M viewers
2024: 19.5 M viewers
2023: 18.8 M viewers
2022: 16.6 M viewers
2021: 10.4 M viewers
2000: 46.3 M viewers
Mini Tidbits:
Warner Bros.’ former marketing chief, Josh Goldstine, behind the universally seen Barbie (2023), is in talks to join Paramount Pictures in a similar role. Goldstine left WB earlier this year.
HBO Max picks up One Day In October. This 4-part scripted series follows stories of love, bravery, endurance, and grief arising from the October 2023 attack in Israel. Airing October 7th.
Longtime ESPN exec Katina Arnold has been promoted to Disney’s Senior Vice President of Advertising Communications. She will be responsible for overseeing all areas related to Disney’s ad sales, covering the media giant’s extensive portfolio.
Trailers:
20th Century Studios’ Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Release: Oct 24th
Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story
Release: Oct 3rd
Spying Stars
Trailer - an arthouse The Last of Us vibe
Premiere: Busan International Film Festival
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
“We are.. all of us.. drawn to monsters...”
Netflix has dropped the first teaser trailer for the Claire Danes (Homeland) and Matthew Rhys (The Americans) led limited series The Beast In Me.
The visuals in the trailer are fast-paced, fragmented, and drenched in shadows, mirroring the fractured psyche of Danes’ Aggie, an author reeling with guilt after the death of her son. The line between humanity and monstrosity is blurred as she struggles to navigate both personal demons and the escalating threats around her.
It’s been five years since the gripping finale of the acclaimed Showtime espionage series Homeland (2011-20, scene), where Danes played the brilliant and badass CIA officer Carrie Mathison. The role landed the actress a Golden Globe and two Primetime Emmys, highlighting her emotional fragility beneath a fierce exterior, a vulnerability she appears ready to channel once more in The Beast in Me.
The thriller miniseries drops on the streamer on Nov. 13th.
Hope, from South Korean filmmaker Na Hong-Jin (The Chaser, trailer), has the director’s first international cast:
Michael Fassbender
Alicia Vikander
Taylor Russell
Plus some South Korean stars like Jung Ho-yeon (Disclaimer) and Hwang Jung-min.
Synopsis:
A mysterious discovery is made on the outskirts of the remote harbor town. The residents find themselves in a desperate fight for survival against something they have never encountered before.
Release: Summer 2026. Check out the first look here.
Post-apocalyptic drama One Second After is led by Taken’s Famke Janssen from MPI Original Films (Miss Virginia).
Known for her work as Jean Grey in the X-Men series and, of course, as Onatopp, a femme fatale in GoldenEye (1995, clip), in the new film, Janssen will be taking on a force greater than evil mutants or Bond himself.
In One Second After, the actress will play a major political figure who gets put in charge after an electromagnetic pulse devastates modern technology, resulting in a societal collapse.
A sci-fi thriller adaptation of William R. Forstchen’s 2009 novel, One Second After, has just begun filming in Bulgaria.
Mini Tidbits:
Oscar nominee Mary McDonnell (Dances With Wolves) joins Marvel’s Vision Disney+ series in an undisclosed role. The series has been rumored to focus on various Marvel AIs given a second chance at a “real life”.
Fox’s upcoming drama series Memory of a Killer casts Michaela McManus (You) in a recurring role. Opposite Patrick Dempsey and Michael Imperioli, McManus will play Nicky, the mysterious manager of Silverstrand Club, a gathering place for mobsters. The series will drop in early 2026.
Dougray Scott (Mission: Impossible 2, Desperate Housewives) will star as Hans Christian Andersen in crime drama Fairytale Detective. Fairytale writer Andersen solves mysteries in 1850s Copenhagen with help from his story characters. Created by Brendan Foley (Sherlock and Daughter), the Omega Global Media series will be shopped at Mipcom.
Mare of Easttown’s John Douglas Thompson is joining Netflix’s All the Sinners Bleed in a series regular role. Best known as the Brooklyn-native minister in HBO’s The Gilded Age, in the Netflix drama, Thompson will take on another leadership role as the town’s first Black sheriff. The series is set to premiere late next year.
Stanley Tucci has another hosting gig in Italy—The Olympics! Tucci, who hosts Nat Geo’s Tucci in Italy, will provide some travel/food coverage for the Milan Winter Olympics in Feb 2026. No one is better suited for the role.
Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone won’t appear in The Batman: Part II due to script timing. It’s a shame she was a standout in The Penguin series (and she has the Emmy to prove it!). Matt Reeves does seem open to having her return sometime in the future
Paula Shaw, veteran actress best known as Jason’s mother in Freddy vs. Jason ,has died at 84. A stage, TV, and film performer, she also taught transformative acting workshops at Esalen Institute for decades.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Row K Entertainment makes its second acquisition out of TIFF. They’ve picked up Charlie Harper, which is world premiering in Special Presentations at TIFF.
Synopsis:
Harper and Charlie try to build a life together. While Harper strives to carve out a career as a chef, Charlie is stuck. Facing challenges in their relationship, they struggle to prove they are meant for each other, but will it be enough?
The film features two stellar performances by CODA’s Emilia Jones as Harper and Nick Robinson (Love, Simon) as Charlie.
There’s an interesting non-linear element in the film that allows us to ricochet between the couple’s idealized first year together and their contentious present, 5 years into the relationship.
Check out our TIFF interview with the first-time directors: https://theindustry.co/p/tiff-charlie-harper-interview
Row K previously grabbed Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire. This marks only the third acquisition from TIFF after Focus Features picked up the horror film Obsession.
The Astronaut, the sci-fi starring Kate Mara & Laurence Fishburne, has secured US distribution via Vertical.
Synopsis:
An astronaut believes something extraterrestrial has followed her back to Earth.
First, look image here.
Mara always draws the short end of the stick in space shows, like in the recent Black Mirror episode Beyond the Sea.
Releasing Sept.
The Condor Daughter feels like it’s ripped the color palette from Dee Rees' breakout film Pariah. And that’s a good thing!
The story is totally unique:
A young Quechua midwife sings to pregnant women, calming their pain through her song. Her mother, a veteran midwife, understands this gift as a miracle granted by the Gods. Influenced by her best friend and after getting to know a group of city singers, the young woman decides to leave and pursue a career as a singer.
We won’t give the rest of this away, but there’s a fierce spirituality to this that becomes dangerous. From director Álvaro Olmos Torrico. Trailer.
Tidbit:
Run, an indie drama feature helmed by Melissa Miller Costanzo (dir. All These Small Moments), has just begun production. Before directing her own projects, the filmmaker served as an art department coordinator on films like David O. Russell’s The Fighter (2010) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), which helped shape her strong visual storytelling.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Poland has picked Agnieszka Holland’s unconventional biopic Kafka (trailer) as its official Oscars selection. The non-chronological film tells the story of Czech author Franz Kafka, who became known as one of the 20th century’s most inventive writers long after he had died. Kafka just had its world premiere at TIFF.
Neon’s The Secret Agent (to no one’s surprise) is Brazil’s official submission for the Oscars International Feature Film category. The studio acquired the humorous and heartfelt drama after it premiered at Cannes, where Narcos actor Wagner Moura took home the Best Actor prize. Last year’s Walter Salles film, I’m Still Here (2024), was the first-ever Brazilian film to win the Best International Oscar. The Secret Agent trailer.
The Academy will release the shortlist of 15 films in contention on Dec. 16th.
21 other countries have selected their Oscar submissions. Check them all out here:
https://theindustry.co/p/oscars-2026-international-feature
Rockin Robin Robin: Aardman creators of Chicken Run, Wallace and Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep, amongst many other delightful claymation-centric films, have secured a cute little spin-off for their Oscar-nominated 2021 Netflix short Robin Robin. It was a Christmas tale about a bird that thought she was a mouse; now, most appropriately, it is getting a CGI preschool spin-off series, The Adventures of Robin Robin. The 52 x 7-minute episodes target ages 3–5 and their parents.
See the original trailer here.
Mini Tidbits:
Anurag Kashyap, best known for Gangs of Wasseypur, will shift from Gangsters to a family drama, Nishaanchi. Starring newcomer Aaishvary Thackeray in dual roles as twin brothers Babloo and Dabloo. Set in Kanpur and Lucknow, the film will explore love, rivalry, and family above all else. Coming Sept. 19, Amazon MGM Studios India. Trailer here.
Sony Pictures Television has reupped its film slate deal with Sinema TV, a prominent Turkish pay-TV operator. The extended Pay-One deal gives Sinema exclusive rights to a wide range of Sony titles like 28 Years Later, Spider-Man, Karate Kid, and many more.
Icelandic production company Glassriver (Reykjavik Noir) is developing a TV series based on Konrad, a bestselling seven-book collection following a troubled detective from acclaimed author Arnaldur Indriðason (Operation Napoleon).
ON THIS DAY
2000. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon wins the People's Choice Award at TIFF.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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