Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
20th Century’s UFO, Paramount’s CFO, and Morpheus.
Let’s go!
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Headed to SXSW 2026? We've got a full breakdown of the line-up here:
https://theindustry.co/p/the-sxsw-lineup-2026
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Scott Cooper will write/direct a 20th Century’s Roswell UFO film.
Paramount taps Dennis Cinelli as CFO.
Paramount adds Andrew Campion (former Nike COO) to board.
Disney+ signs a 2-year 1st-look deal w/ Stephen Graham’s Matriarch Productions.
A24 and HBO renew their Pay-1 output deal for a multi-year term.
Prime Video orders Odd Jobs, a future-set adult animated comedy.
Asad Ayaz becomes Chief Marketing and Brand Officer of Disney.
Issa Rae inks a 3-year first-look producing deal at Paramount.
Ryan Tedder (OneRepublic) and Concord Originals team on Bleeding Love.
Searchlight wins rights to Grand Rising, a psychological horror-thriller.
Universal EVP Matt Reilly exits to become President of Production at Arena SNK.
Gracie Abrams stars in Please from A24 + Halina Reijn (dir: Babygirl).
Prime Video’s God of War casts Ryan Hurst as Kratos.
The Morelli Brothers' directorial debut, Prima, stars Faye Dunaway.
SkyShowtime has ordered Morpheus, a Polish crime drama.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
UFO. UFO. UFO. Scott Cooper (dir: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere) is writing and directing a new film with 20th Century Studios on the supposed alien spaceship craft that crashed in Roswell, NM. Check out the original headline from 1947 above.
We thought the best part of Cooper’s Springsteen film was the sequence where Jeremy Allen White is driving back home, listening to Frankie Teardrop by Suicide. It’s wildly psychological. We hope he can capture some of that intensity in his Roswell portrayal.
Other upcoming UFO films this year include Spielberg’s and Joseph Kosinski’s.
Paramount is making Dennis Cinelli its new CFO. Cinelli was recently added to Paramount’s board. Before that, he served as CFO of Scale AI. Current interim CFO Andrew C. Warren will move to an advisory position.
So an AI expert is now CFO. This mirrors David Ellison’s desire to rapidly infuse AI decision-making into their tech stack. There are good use cases for AI. Let’s hope this is one. Cinelli wrote this about his experience using AI at Uber: https://scale.com/blog/scale-cfo
Paramount also adds a new board member, Andrew Campion (former COO: Nike).
Disney+ signs a two-year first-look deal with Stephen Graham’s production company, Matriarch Productions.
We’ve gone from loving Graham’s work in Adolescence to really loving him. Every awards show, the man gets up there and says how “it doesn’t matter what number you are on the call sheet, you’re a human being.” So the fact that he’s working with Disney+ on originals, both scripted and unscripted, is great.
Matriarch Productions, which he runs with his wife, Hannah Walters, produced Adolescence as well as Hulu’s A Thousand Blows series, now in its 2nd season.
Tidbits:
A24 and HBO sitting in a tree. The two studios are renewing their pay-1 deal for an unspecified multi-year term. E.G., following A24’s theatrical and PVOD runs for any of their films, the movies transition to streaming on HBO. It’s a great fit, both brands are high-quality. Good marriage.
Prime Video has ordered Odd Jobs, a future-set adult animated comedy from the team behind Solar Opposites, Mike McMahan and Dominic Dierkes. Set in 2127, it follows gig workers tackling dangerous app-driven tasks in a late-stage capitalist Midwest. Solar Opposites was a fun alien fish out of water family comedy, but where it really shone was its clever and dramatic “The Wall” subplot - Trailer.
The Walt Disney Company establishes a new enterprise marketing division. Disney President of Marketing, Asad Ayaz, will now serve as the division’s Chief Marketing and Brand Officer. Essentially, the role will help unify and provide marketing opportunities across the full company. Likely, this is coming about as Disney is making massive investments in AI, partnering with OpenAI. And re-thinking its Marvel, Star Wars, and streaming strategy after the relative collapse of those segments.
If Paramount can’t buy Warner Bros., it will just snag their talent. They’ve poached Issa Rae (creator/star: HBO’s Insecure), who has just signed a three-year first-look producing deal for both film and TV. It’s a great get, as Insecure was mega popular, garnering 14 Emmy nominations and a 5-season run. Paramount has also pulled Matt and Ross Duffer (Stranger Things) from Netflix and Jon M. Chu (dir: Wicked) from Universal.
Musician Ryan Tedder (OneRepublic) will team with Concord Originals on Bleeding Love. An original movie musical that uses Ryan Tedder’s hit songs to tell a grounded, contemporary story about relationships under pressure, career trade-offs, and how personal choices ripple through a group of connected characters built around his hit songwriting catalog, plus new music. Currently in production.
Searchlight has won rights to Grand Rising, a psychological horror-thriller based on novelist A.C. Robinson’s short story. Plot details are under wraps. The project marks their first major package sale of the year.
Mini Tidbit:
Universal’s EVP exits
CBS Sports sails into a new deal
Netflix and Pete Davidson
All those and more mini tidbits here:
https://theindustry.co/p/universal-searchlight-pete-davidson
Renewals:
OWN’s Belle Collective (for S7)
Trailers:
HBO’s Euphoria (Season 3)
Cast: Zendaya, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi
Release: April 12
Amazon MGM Studios’ The Bluff
Cast: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Karl Urban (The Boys)
Release: Feb 25
Prime Video’s The Gray House
Cast: Kevin Costner, Jena Malone
Release: Coming Soon
K-POPS!
Cast: Anderson .Paak, Lee Byung-hun
Premiered: TIFF
Release: Feb 27
Virgil Films’ She Was Here - The Heather O’Rourke Story (doc)
Release: Feb 24
1 2 Special’s Kontinental ’25
Cast: Eszter Tompa
Release: Mar 27
IFC’s This Is Not a Test
Cast: Olivia Scott Welch
Release: Feb 20
Release Dates:
Black Bear’s Tuner
Cast: Leo Woodall, Havana Rose Liu, Dustin Hoffman
Director: Daniel Roher (Navalny)
Release: May 22 (limited), May 29 (expansion)
Black Bear’s The Rivals of Amziah King
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Cole Sprouse
Release: August 14 (limited), August 21 (expansion)
Black Bear’s Spa Weekend
Cast: Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher
Release: September 4
Black Bear’s Wife & Dog (Working Title)
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Rosamund Pike, Cosmo Jarvis
Dir: Guy Ritchie
Release: Oct 23
ABC’s The Rookie
Cast: Nathan Fillion
Release: Feb 18
NBC’s The Fall and Rise of Tracy Morgan
Cast: Tracy Morgan
Release: Feb 23
Name Change:
Universal Pictures’ Flowervale Street
(new title forthcoming)
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Grammy-nominated Gracie Abrams + A24 + Halina Reijn (dir: Babygirl) make quite the trio. Abrams, best known for her song That’s So True, is starring in Please, the new film by Reijn.
No plot details have been released, but Reijn teased it would focus on “themes of violence and masculinity.”
Abrams is an interesting choice. She’s the daughter of J.J. Abrams, so she’s got film in her blood. Her music performances (clip) seem a bit Disney-ified. But her IG is very punk.
Maybe that’s the point, Reijn’s cinema dances on this dichotomy of following the rules and then well… if you’ve seen Babygirl, you get where I’m going.
Will Abrams be the next Alana Haim?
Tidbits:
Prime Video’s long-developing God of War series has officially locked in its Kratos. Ryan Hurst (Sons of Anarchy) will take on the mantle of the titular God of War, the Spartan warrior at the center of the PlayStation franchise. The role reunites Hurst with the property he knows well through a different role. He previously voiced Thor in God of War: Ragnarok -clip. The show will adapt the most recent games, following Kratos and his young son Atreus on a mythic journey to scatter the ashes of Faye. Currently in production after a big team reset in 2023.
Netflix comedy The Fifth Wheel adds Jack Whitehall (Jungle Cruise), Casey Wilson (Happy Endings), and Scott MacArthur (The Righteous Gemstones) alongside Kim Kardashian. Directed by Eva Longoria. The film follows a successful woman who joins a Vegas getaway with her longtime friends, only to realize she has become the awkward outsider as old dynamics resurface.
Arian Moayed joins Ben Stiller and Jessica Chastain in an Apple TV+ The Off Weeks. Moayed plays Stiller’s boss. The film revolves around a divorced professor (Stiller) who juggles shared custody of his children while pursuing a passionate romance with an enigmatic woman. I can imagine Moayed cutting Stiller down to size for showing up late for work. Moayed has a snide demeanor perfected in Succession (clip).
Mini Tidbits:
More than 30 years after Gettysburg, Stephen Lang (Avatar) returns to the Civil War in indie drama Gettysburg 1863. Filming in Pennsylvania, the film follows a local family amid war and the Underground Railroad. Lang will play Union hero John L. Burns, reversing his earlier Confederate role.
Emily Bader (My Lady Jane) will play soccer legend Mia Hamm in Netflix’s The 99’ers, a biopic about the U.S. Women’s National Team’s 1999 World Cup win.
Peacock’s Superfakes starring Lucy Liu gets three new cast members: rapper Bohan Phoenix, Michelle Jones Lee, and Keith Leung.
FESTIVALS
SXSW 2026 lineup is here.
There are projects from Warner Bros., 20th Century, Lionsgate, A24, and Neon.
And projects starring Vince Vaughn, Zach Galifianakis, Britt Lower + Rhea Seehorn. Plus, Alfonso Cuarón, Danny DeVito, and Kevin Bacon are all producing films.
Full breakdown here: https://theindustry.co/p/the-sxsw-lineup-2026
Berlinale also adds to its line-up in a trio of categories:
Special Programme, with films from previous festivals starring Sam Rockwell, John Turturro, and Ethan Hawke (full list here)
Generation 14+ - with a project starring Bella Ramsey
Two Berlin titles pick up Sales Reps:
Roya
Sales Rep: Totem (My Favourite Cake)
Synopsis:
Follows a teacher imprisoned for her political beliefs who faces the choice of making a forced televised confession or remaining confined to her three-square-metre cell.
The Garden We Dreamed (Panorama)
Sales Rep: M-Appeal (Dreams, Love, Sex)
Synopsis:
In a land not their own, amid a dwindling forest, a family carves out a fragile bubble of tenderness – a fleeting garden of hope where love can still take root.
Berlinale kicks off Feb 12- 22.
BAFTA Rising Star nominees:
Archie Madekwe (Lurker)
Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another)
Miles Caton (Sinners)
Posy Sterling (Lollipop)
Robert Aramayo (I Swear)
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Indie drama Prima marks the directorial debut of Luca and Alessandro Morelli, the Morelli Brothers, whose short-form and fashion work led to a stacked cast.
Starring Nicola Peltz Beckham (The Beauty), a prima ballerina has her position shaken when her ballet company’s leadership changes.
Faye Dunaway (Bonnie & Clyde), Mira Sorvino (Shining Vale), Jack Huston (Day of the Fight), and Betty Gabriel (Get Out) co-star.
Currently in production.
Mini Tidbits:
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis will score Netflix’s Norwegian crime series Detective Hole, based on Jo Nesbø’s novels. The nine-episode drama stars Tobias Santelmann as antihero detective Harry Hole and premieres March 26. Always mixing his haunting music with film, Cave recently contributed a song to Train Dreams. Music Video.
Mubi and Chanel Culture Fund extend partnership with M+ on a ten-film Asian experimental cinema collection, launching Jan. 16 and spanning six decades of content.
SkyShowtime has ordered Morpheus, a Polish crime drama. The series follows a lawyer who unexpectedly inherits his family’s criminal empire. Filming has just wrapped.
ON THIS DAY
1948. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre premieres.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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