Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Neon’s Hope, Sam Raimi’s Magic and Turpentine.
Let’s go!
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The Cannes Official Selection has presented two films that are polar opposites yet stunningly beautiful. And they’re both from Neon.
The first is All of a Sudden, directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car). It is a profound 3.5hr meditation on how to use art to reform thoughts and ideas. To keep pace with the slowest person. To let the outside in.
It revolves around a Japanese playwright and a director of a nursing home whose discourse allows the status quo of that retirement community to move to an enlightened level of humanity. Hamaguchi’s meditative pace allows his carefully constructed ideas to seep in and fill up your soul. It’s the best film I’ve seen at the festival.
The second film is Hope from Na Hong-jin (dir: The Chaser, The Yellow Sea). It’s a hardcore action film with aliens. With a larger message on species extinction and immigration. There’s a micro and macro story being played out that twists the POV in a complicated way, showing that the grotesque humanoid aliens have the most heart of anyone on screen.
The action scenes twist us through the post-apocalyptic streets and forest-scapes of a town called Hope, where we follow a police officer and some mercenaries as they band together to protect against a literal alien invasion.
The festival is a little over halfway done, and there are more films to be seen, but these two will resonate well beyond their release dates.
For More:
Hope trailer.
All of a Sudden non-English trailer.
A24 has just acquired the buzziest film at Cannes this year from Un Certain Regard: Jordan Fistman’s directorial debut Club Kid.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Sam Raimi to direct Magic remake for Lionsgate.
Cate Blanchett joins Brady Corbet’s epic The Origin of the World.
James Franco boards Vietnam-set John Rambo prequel with Noah Centineo.
Claire Denis developing serial-killer horror film The Soap Maker.
Kenneth Lonergan returns with ensemble drama Tomorrow is a Drag.
Keanu Reeves joins voice cast of stop-motion revenge film Hidari.
Bill Camp joins thriller Turpentine with Melissa McCarthy.
Freddie Highmore & David Shore team in bank-robber drama I’m Not Here To Hurt You.
See-Saw Films signs $50M financing partnership with Entourage Ventures.
Fifth Season and HarbourView Equity Partners strike indie film financing pact.
Charles Randolph adapting Muppets in Moscow.
Friday’s correct answer: 3 films Will Smith starred in during his time on Fresh Prince. 48% got it right.
Box office quick hit:
#1: Michael has a minuscule drop of 31% in its 4th week, rocketing it to #1 at the box office with $26.1M domestic. It has now hit $703.9M worldwide.
#2: The Devil Wears Prada 2 is now at $546.2M worldwide (overtaking the first film’s worldwide total, counting inflation).
#3: Focus Features’ Obsession opens with a fantastic $16.1M.
#9: Black Bear’s In the Grey directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill underperforms with a $3M domestic opening.
#10: Amazon’s Is God Is slightly underperforms with a $2.2M domestic opening.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Sam Raimi and the possessed right hand. Raimi will direct Lionsgate’s modern adaptation of William Goldman’s novel Magic. You may remember that book because it was turned into a cult horror classic, Magic (1978, Trailer). The original film follows a mentally unstable ventriloquist, Corky (Anthony Hopkins), as he finds sudden fame by using a dummy called Fats, only for the dummy to take on a manipulative life of its own and drive him to commit murder.
The director and material are perfect for each other. Raimi rose to fame with horror comedy films that blended shocking violence with gleeful absurdity like Evil Dead II (1987) and Drag Me to Hell (2009). The charm of those movies was that they never took themselves too seriously. After all, Raimi is no stranger to possessed body parts – Ash Williams in Evil Dead II had to cut off his own right hand before it killed him. Maybe we’ll see the same “Man vs. Hand” horror for the ventriloquist in Magic.
Raimi’s last film, survival horror-comedy Send Help (2026), earned $96M worldwide at the box office. It seems like he wants to keep the momentum going, reuniting with the same writers, Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, for the new psychological thriller.
Mini Tidbits:
Sony Pictures Entertainment’s SVP of Corporate Communications, Stacy Weitz is stepping down from the television division after a decade with the studio. Her focus was on international production, global distribution, and the Game Show group (Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune).
Two obits:
Documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, best known for films that humanized marginalized individuals, dies at 65. His work, like Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse (2013) and Finding Normal (2007), sheds light on mental illness and police brutality.
Tony Seiniger, often known as “The Godfather of Movie Advertising”, dies at 87. He was a movie marketer and a poster designer, having created the posters for many classic cinema icons like Jaws (1975), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), and Mean Streets (1973).
Clips:
Mubi’s Coward
Cannes Competition Title
Dir: Lukas Dhont (Close)
Trailer:
YouTube’s Don’t Suck S2
Cast: Jeff Hiller
Release: June 4
Release Dates:
Markiplier’s Iron Lung
YouTube Release: May 31
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Brady Corbet’s next film is 4 hours, spans 150 years, and is rumored to be shot on 65mm film. Few actors could anchor something that huge quite like two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett.
In Corbet’s mysterious epic The Origin of the World (unofficial title), Blanchett joins Selena Gomez in an “X-rated feature that spans from the 19th century into the present day.”
Corbet’s films operate on an overwhelming scale, which Blanchett is more than capable of taking on. From the massive mythical world of The Lord of the Rings to her mesmerizing performance in Tár (2022, scene), a smaller, more intimate film built around a character so intricate and dynamic that she completely consumes every frame.
She gives off an old-Hollywood screen presence that Corbet seems drawn to (in fact, she played Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator). The film could be a reunion with her Black Bag co-star Michael Fassbender, who is in talks to join.
Filming is set to start this summer in Portugal.
Jaime King is going full chaos. The Pearl Harbor (2001) actress is set to star and produce in Darlene, a dark comedy feature from Pet Sematary (1989) director Mary Lambert.
In her first leading part since Hulu’s Code Name Banshee (2022), King will take on the titular role, a trailer park influencer whose obsession with internet fame sends her into a spiral of murder and Southern-fried chaos alongside a wackier-than-usual Natasha Lyonne.
The high-octane satire is set to begin production this summer in Louisiana.
Tidbits:
Scarlett Johansson steals the stage in James Gray's family drama that morphs into a thriller in Neon’s Paper Tiger. The film just premiered at Cannes in the official selection (1 of 2 US films). Plot: Adam Driver and Miles Teller play brothers trying to make a quick buck, which gets them deeply involved with the Russian mafia. Scarlett Johansson internalizes her fear, disappointment, and rage in a way that boils up within her in the most profound and distressing ways, as if she bears the emotional brunt of much of what her husband and her brother-in-law do. Releasing this fall.
James Franco (The Interview) joins the cast of the Rambo prequel film John Rambo, directed by Jalmari Helander (Sisu). The film will feature Rambo (Noah Centineo) in his earlier days, before the events of the first movie, as he fights his way through the jungles of Vietnam. Franco is said to have a small role in the film, though not specified.
Mini Tidbits:
Keanu Reeves to lead the voice cast of Japanese Stop-Motion animation Hidari. Based on the Proof of Concept short by director Masashi Kawamura, the film will follow an artisan who loses his father figure, his fiancée, and his right arm – setting him on a path for vengeance. The original short garnered close to 5M views on YouTube since its release.
Bill Camp (The Night Of) joins thriller feature Turpentine, alongside Melissa McCarthy and Connor Storrie (Heated Rivalry). The film will follow a son who hires friends to rob his own parents to pay off a bookie. Craig Zobel (HBO’s The Penguin) will direct the feature with Rian Johnson’s production company, T-Street, to produce.
Jay Huguley (The Walking Dead) joins Amazon MGM’s Ally Clark. The show will follow an investigator who tries to get to the bottom of her friend’s death by looking into a dangerous global conglomerate. Viola Davis leads the series alongside Huguley.
Freddie Highmore (The Good Doctor) and David Shore (creator: The Good Doctor) are teaming up for Sony Pictures Television’s I’m Not Here To Hurt You. The show will follow the true story of a man who became known as “Ireland’s most polite bank robber”.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
Seven more projects launch at the Cannes Market. Including those starring Russell Crowe and Colman Domingo. Full breakdown here.
Non Cannes sales rep pickups:
The Beast
U.S. Sales: Aura Entertainment (Hungry)
Dir: Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2)
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Joel Kinnaman (Suicide Squad)
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Famed French director Claire Denis (Chocolat) is working on the scariest new film, and you’ll never believe the title. The Soap Maker is inspired by the true story of an Italian serial killer, Leonarda Cianciulli, who used chemicals to dispose of her victims into soaps, candles, and cookies for the people in her community.
In the same vein as The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en (music to my ears). Denis is coming off the TIFF-premiering The Fence (2025), a West African thriller also centered on death but in a colonial setting, told like a ghost story. The Soap Maker brings Denis back to cannibalistic erotic horror, just like her 2001 film Trouble Every Day (trailer), where lovers had the urge to literally devour each other.
CAA is currently packaging.
Oscar-winning director Kenneth Lonergan (Dir: Manchester By the Sea) is directing his first film in 10 years, Tomorrow is a Drag, starring Aubrey Plaza, Adam Driver, Vanessa Kirby (The Fantastic Four: First Steps), and Matthew Broderick.
No info on the plot of the film, but the star-studded ensemble cast is enough to keep us anticipating. Lonergan’s films are characterized by rawness and devastating realism – something we would love to see from Plaza and Kirby, who have mainly been doing genre characters in recent years.
Tidbits:
Moby continues to EP a bold slate of indie films. His latest is Welcome Space Brothers, which is also EP’d by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, & Elijah Wood. The film centers on the Unarius Academy of Science, an extraterrestrial channeling spiritual school/cult in California in the 1970s. This picks up on the trend of Moby EPing films that involve oddball micro communities, with his previous being the Sundance film The Incomer starring Domhnall Gleeson, recently picked up by Sumerian Pictures. Check out the wacky and wonderful poster for Welcome Space Brothers here.
Fifth Season and HarbourView Equity Partners make a multi-picture financing pact. The deal will help Fifth Season finance a variety of indie projects, including A24’s action film The Peasant, directed by and starring Dev Patel (Monkey Man). Also included in the slate is thriller Nightwatching, starring Mila Kunis and Clancy Brown (The Penguin).
Indie powerhouse See-Saw Films (The King’s Speech) has signed a multi-year production and financing partnership with Paris-based investment firm Entourage Ventures. The Mediawan-owned British-Australian studio will have more financial flexibility with Entourage investing up to $50M in equity over the next three years across its future feature slate.
Tidbits:
The Muppets are going to Russia
Horror film, Bokshi
Kino Lorber doc pick-up The Story of Documentary Film
All those tidbits and more here.
ON THIS DAY
2001. Shrek debuts.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace,
and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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