Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Schwarzenegger. Stallone. Separation.
Let’s go!
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THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Arnold Schwarzenegger returns to Conan the Barbarian w/ Christopher McQuarrie.
Sylvester Stallone will EP Lionsgate’s John Rambo prequel.
Paramount Skydance president Jeff Shell is sued for $150M.
Disney+ is developing a live-action Tinker Bell series.
Amazon MGM signs Mike Flanagan to a multi-year overall deal.
Scott Delman and Zanne Devine acquire The Peacock and the Sparrow.
Casey Wasserman’s company is renamed The Team.
Jeff Daniels joins Season 5 of Apple TV’s The Morning Show.
Donald Glover joins The Super Mario Galaxy Movie as Yoshi.
Benjamin Bratt joins Hulu’s The Land and Prime’s Ballard.
Tessa Thompson will star in Jonas Carpignano’s A Separation.
GKIDS acquires U.S. rights to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Look Back.
Sony Pictures Classics names John Z. Shahinian as VP of sales.
Sony LIV acquires Aamir Khan’s Sitaare Zameen Par.
Yesterday’s correct answer: 1 more film Tarantino has promised to direct.
65% got it right.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
He’s back. Arnold Schwarzenegger is returning to the series that launched his career in the film industry, Conan the Barbarian. 20th Century is now developing King Conan starring Schwarzenegger with Christopher McQuarrie (Dir: MI:5 - MI:8) attached to write and direct.
It will follow Schwarzenegger as an aged king who loses his throne and has to fight to get it back.
McQuarrie is a smart filmmaker, who has actualized the most extreme dramatic scenes in cinema: Tom Cruise literally surviving actual peril on screen. Schwarzenegger will be 80 by the time this is releasing so we’re hoping he won’t be doing any death-defying stunts. In fact this could be a bit of a reckoning for Schwarzenegger, taking on a heartier dramatic role.
Schwarzenegger also hinted at potential returns to Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator franchise and a Commando 2 in development, bringing his career full circle.
Sylvester Stallone will EP Lionsgate and Millennium Media’s John Rambo prequel. Jalmari Helander (Sisu) will direct, with Noah Centineo starring.
The story, set in Vietnam, will chronicle the origin story of the man who would become John Rambo.
Stallone co-wrote and starred in the last five Rambo films. So while this EP credit may just be so they can blow up his name on the poster, we still hope he has some creative involvement. The first Rambo had an extreme violence to it that turned Stallone into, for better or worse, an action star.
Production is ongoing in Thailand.
Paramount Skydance’s President Jeff Shell is being sued for $150M. Shell, former CEO of NBCUniversal, is being sued by Robert James “R.J.” Cipriani (AP on Jason Statham’s Wild Card). Cipriani alleges that Shell baited him into thinking that he would help him produce the English language version of Roku’s Serenata De Las Estrellas.
The larger issue at hand, though, is that it seems Shell shared with Cipriani some financial details about Paramount deals (UFC, South Park) before they closed. This could threaten his position as President at PSKY.
Tidbits:
Do you believe in fairies? Disney+ certainly does. The streamer is developing Tink, a live-action series centered on Peter Pan’s mischievous fairy sidekick, Tinker Bell. The iconic character has seen both the big and small screen in many iterations from the original 1950s classic to as recent as the Disney+ movie Peter Pan and Wendy (2023), where Yara Shahidi (Grown-ish) portrayed Tink. Plot is unknown, but Friday Night Lights writers Liz Heldens and Bridget Carpenter are on board to write and EP.
Amazon MGM must be liking what they’re seeing. They’ve just signed an exclusive multi-year overall deal with Mike Flanagan (dir: Doctor Sleep, The Life of Chuck). He’s the showrunner on Amazon MGM’s new 8-episode Carrie series, which just wrapped production. Based, of course, on the iconic Stephen King novel, which became Brian De Palma’s supernatural horror masterwork Carrie (1976).
A novel about a CIA agent written by a former CIA agent, sounds promising. Producers Scott Delman (HBO Max’s Station Eleven) and Zanne Devine (I, Tonya) have obtained the film rights to CIA officer I.S. Berry’s debut novel The Peacock and the Sparrow. Set in the Middle East, the heart-pounding thriller follows a spy who becomes intertwined in an unpredictable revolution while juggling love and betrayal. Currently casting.
Casey Wasserman, founder and CEO of Wasserman Agency (sports/music), has renamed his company The Team. This comes amid him selling his company and stepping down amid his connections to Epstein. At this point, the other talent agency he owns, Brillstein Entertainment Partners (clients: Brad Pitt, Sydney Sweeney), seems to be continuing as usual.
YouTube is the biggest media company, based on 2025 media revenue:
$62bn - YouTube
$60.9bn - Disney
$42.5bn - Netflix
That puts YT’s valuation at $500-$560bn.
Renewals:
AMC’s The Audacity (for S2)
Fox’s Doc (for S3)
Trailers:
Apple TV’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Release: April 15th
Sumerian’s Mile End Kicks
Premiere: TIFF
Cast: Barbie Ferreira
Release: April 17
Black Bear’s In the Grey
Wri/Dir: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill
Release: May 15
BBC’s Crookhaven
Release: March 22
Arctic Link
Premiere: CPH: DOX
Worldwide sales rep: Filmotor (Letters from Wolf Street)
Buffalo 8’s PH-1
Dir/Star: Mark Kassen
Release: April 10
Release date:
HBO Max Italy’s Gina Lollobrigida: Diva Contesa (doc)
Release: April 3
Sky’s SNL UK
Airing the next day on Peacock after Sky release
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
We’re bringing The Newsroom to The Morning Show.
Apple TV has announced that Jeff Daniels will join the fifth season of The Morning Show. It has been reported that he will play a billionaire owner of an investment company. It will be interesting to see how the Newsroom star steps into the shoes of a non-journalist role.
Jeff Daniels has previously played a strong willed businessman in a power struggle before, taking the role of John Sculley (clip) in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs (2015).
Yoshi’s in the Mushroom Kingdom.
Donald Glover joins The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) as the fan-favorite green dinosaur, Yoshi. The sequel to Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) cast also includes Luis Guzmán and Issa Rae.
Donald Glover is an unexpected yet reasonable fit for the role, having played lovable fan-favorite characters like Simba in The Lion King (2019) and Miles Morales in Ultimate Spider-Man.
Tidbits:
1923’s Julia Schlaepfer is joining the A-list ensemble of HBO Max pilot How To Survive Without Me. Schlaepfer will play a gorgeous mess who has a penchant for chaos alongside Ray Romano, Joshua Jackson, and Kaley Cuoco. From Warner Bros. TV and Greg Berlanti, the one-hour drama is currently filming in LA.
Amazon MGM Studio’s YA thriller series We Were Liars ups Dempsey Bryk (Black Mirror) to a series regular for its second season. His rough-around-the-edges Ebon suffered a great loss the last go around at Martha’s Vineyard, this time he’ll have to recuperate and try to avoid the tempting rich circles. S2 drops summer 2027.
NBC’s newest Dick Wolf crime drama, What the Dead Know, casts Michiel Huisman (The Haunting of Hill House) to star opposite Taylor Schilling. He’ll play an experienced homicide detective in his first series regular role since ABC’s Nashville (2012-16). Filming is ongoing in New York.
The lifeguard stand is getting a little fuller. Social media personalities Brooks Nader (Love Thy Nader) and Noah Beck (Tubi’s Sidelined) have joined Fox’s Baywatch reboot. In series regular roles Nader will play the sharp-tongued captain Selene, and Beck the charming rookie lifeguard.
Elijah Wood might be back as Frodo. When asked if he would reprise the role of Frodo in the upcoming The Lord of the Rings prequel The Hunt for Gollum (2027), Wood said he wouldn’t let anyone else play Frodo “as long as he’s alive and able.”
Mini Tidbits:
Zuri Reed joins Power: Origins. She will play the younger version of Naturi Naughton’s Tasha in the fifth installment of the Starz Power franchise.
Benjamin Bratt joins Hulu’s The Land and Prime Video’s Ballard. The Andor star will portray an NFL head coach and a former DEA agent across the two series.
Obit:
Ghostbusters actress Jennifer Runyon has passed away. She consistently worked throughout the 80s mostly starring in television, notably as Gwendolyn Pierce in CBS sitcom Charles in Charge (1984, clip) or Cindy in the TV movie A Very Brady Christmas (1988).
FESTIVALS
Sales rep pick-up:
Bad Beast (Mala Bestia)
Int. Sales Rep: Alief (Five and a Half Love Stories in an Apartment)
Dir/Wri: Bàrbara Farré (dir. Short film The Last Virgin)
Cast: Roger Casamajor (Pan’s Labyrinth), Iria del Río (Visitor)
Premiering at the Málaga Festival (Main Competition)
Synopsis:
An orphaned girl named Atenea lives in isolation with other children. When adopted by a family, she glimpses a chance at belonging, but her fear of losing this newfound home drives her to extreme measures.
Mini Tidbit:
Former Fremantle global head of documentaries Mandy Chang (prod. It’s Never Over: Jeff Buckley) has been appointed the first CEO of the UK’s Documentary Film Council (DFC). At the council’s three year mark, Chang will help lead advocacy and development efforts for the documentary sector.
CPH:DOX’s Just Look Up is boarded by EPs Adam McKay and Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing). It explores the climate action protest group Climate Defiance.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The king of Calabria is back, but this time not in the sun-baked Italian city. Director Jonas Carpignano (Mediterranea) is set to write and direct A Separation, with Tessa Thompson (Hedda) to star.
Based on Katie Kitamura’s bestselling suspense novel, the story follows a woman who reluctantly travels to Greece to find her missing former husband.
He’s known for his hyper-realistic character-driven stories like his award-winning social drama trilogy:
Debut Mediterranea (2015)
Italy’s Oscar entry A Ciambra (2017)
Cannes winning conclusion Neon’s A Chiara (2021)
Each follows a character going on some type of risky, life-defining journey only to discover more about themselves in the end. With A Separation, while not focused on a teenager in Italy, Carpignano is continuing his fascination with transformative journeys, this time with the consistently impressive Thompson navigating personal revelations.
GKIDS (the U.S. distributor behind Studio Ghibli/Miyazaki titles) has acquired US rights for Look Back. This is director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s (Shoplifters) live-action take on Tatsuki Fujimoto’s (Chainsaw Man) manga.
It follows two young artists whose school newspaper rivalry turns into a life-defining creative partnership, before tragedy reshapes everything.
Kore-eda’s gift for slow, devastating human drama makes him a natural fit.
Tidbits:
Sony Pictures Classics has named John Z. Shahinian as VP of sales bringing over forty years of experience in domestic distribution with him. Previously holding leadership positions at MGM/United Artists and Paramount, in his new role he will oversee the sales division determining theatrical release strategies for new films on the prestige distributor’s slate.
Brazil’s Clube Filmes (Amor Sertanejo) is partnering with producer and former Netflix VP Erik Barmack’s Wild Sheep Content (A Deadly Invitation) on six-part YA mystery thriller Where Is She? From director Fabrício Bittar (Netflix’s Unexplainable), it follows a teenager who goes missing on a school trip, her case is reopened almost a decade later.
Sony LIV picks up Aamir Khan’s Sitaare Zameen Par. Sony LIV is an Indian streaming service with over 33.3M paid subscribers. The 3 Idiots star Aamir Khan produces and stars in Sitaare Zameen Par, a comedy-drama sports film about a basketball coach who gets sent to community service to train a team of neurodivergent players.
Morricone is getting a new documentary. Titled I Never Wrote Music for Films — We All Love Ennio Morricone, the new doc will follow testimonials from the musicians who worked with the legendary composer.
ON THIS DAY
1940. Chuck Norris born in Ryan, Oklahoma.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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