Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Netflix’s Dante, Greengrass’s Drive, and a Vertical Weight.
Let’s go!
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THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Netflix picked up In the Hand of Dante w/ Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, and Al Pacino.
Paul Greengrass is in talks to direct 20th Century’s action film Test Drive.
Universal’s Fast Forever brings on Michael Lesslie as writer.
Prime Video greenlit The Challenger, a Sally Ride series starring Kristen Stewart.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson replaced Jeremy Allen White in Netflix’s Enigma Variations.
Universal TV is adapting sports thriller Lights Out, with Mary J. Blige producing.
Krysten Ritter will star in and EP a series adaptation of her novel Retreat.
Searchlight tapped Watcher filmmaker Chloe Okuno to direct thriller Bad Hand.
Lionsgate acquired Marlon Wayans and Keke Palmer’s action-comedy Ride or Die.
Warner Bros. hired the People We Meet on Vacation writers for its Care Bears movie.
Eight states sued to block Nexstar’s proposed $6.2bn acquisition of Tegna.
Kirsten Dunst will play Alex in the A Minecraft Movie sequel.
Maya Hawke cast in Netflix’s The God of the Woods.
Jessica Gunning joins Apple TV’s live-action adaptation of Berlin Noir.
Vertical picks up NA rights on The Weight, w/ Ethan Hawke & Russell Crowe
Tribeca Films picks up Esta Isla.
Yesterday’s correct answer: Clue was the first board game adaptation.
82% got it right.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Netflix picks up In the Hand of Dante. The film premiered out of competition at Venice and boasts a wild team:
Dir: Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, Al Pacino, John Malkovich, Martin Scorsese, Jason Momoa
Notably, Martin Scorsese plays Dante’s mentor. No word on release date.
Paul Greengrass goes for a drive. He is in talks to direct 20th Century Studios’ Test Drive, an upcoming action film by writer/editor Matt Venne (writer: Antonio Banderas’ Acts of Vengeance).
There’s no word on plot, but some of the most cinematic driving shots of last year came from Greengrass. Just look at his shaky telephoto lens images of the school bus before fire bursts out in Apple TV+’s The Lost Bus. There was so much foreshadowing in those images. We can’t wait to see what he does with this new property.
Shooting would happen by the end of the year or early next year if the deal closes.
Ryan Gosling isn’t the only one going to space. Prime Video has greenlit The Challenger (mini-series) starring/EPed by Kristen Stewart in her TV debut. The showrunner is Maggie Cohn (writer/EP: The Staircase) with Steven Spielberg EPing.
Synopsis:
A group of astronauts, including the first woman and LGBTQ+ member, first Black and Asian Americans, and a married couple become the top crew for NASA’s space shuttle program. Tragedy strikes, and Ride investigates the Challenger disaster.
Stewart plays Sally Ride, who shares a lot of DNA.
Updates on studio book adaptations:
Netflix’s Enigma Variations starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Universal TV’s Lights Out
Netflix’s This Summer Will Be Different
Tidbits:
Searchlight has brought in big names in horror to helm the new thriller Bad Hand. Chloe Okuno (dir: Watcher) will direct from a script by April Wolfe (Black Christmas). Bad Hand follows a woman involved in a hit and run, a week before her wedding, who, to her surprise, becomes bent on bloody revenge. Elizabeth Banks will produce via her Brownstone Productions (Cocaine Bear).
Lionsgate acquires Marlon Wayans (Scary Movie) and Keke Palmer’s (One of Them Days) romantic buddy action-comedy Ride or Die. The film follows a robbery detective and a narcotics detective who are partnered up to track down a billion-dollars’ worth of deadly opioids stolen from a pharmaceutical vault in Chicago. Wayans, who also wrote the film, described it as When Harry Met Sally with Guns.
Warner Bros.’ new Care Bears movie finds writers: Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo (wri: Netflix’s People We Meet on Vacation). Josh Greenbaum (Strays) is attached to direct. The writer duo has experience writing for children’s animation with Hotel Transylvania: Transformania (2022). Let’s see if Warner Bros. can maintain the core warmth of the original Care Bears.
Eight states have sued to block local news giant Nexstar's (value: $6.3bn with/ 200 local stations) purchase of Tegna ($3.2bn value, 64 local stations). The final deal, if approved by the FCC, is valued at $6.2bn and would have the conglomerate own the market on 80% of local stations across the US. This will all add up to $300M in cost savings (E.g., firings) and $8bn in revenue. Nexstar is claiming the deal is already closed.
Stephen Feder joins Disney Live Action as SVP. He comes from Annapurna Pictures, where he operated under a first-look agreement and was involved in guiding both film and television projects, with credits tied to titles like The Grandmaster (2013) and Spring Breakers (2012). Earlier in his career, he spent time at Lucasfilm as VP of film development, contributing to projects including Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
Mini Tidbits:
KPop Demon Hunters are getting rich! Sony will earn $60M+ for the sequel to the Oscar-winning film. The directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans will each earn $10M/year. With the sequel taking around 4-5 years.
Kevin Spacey settles with the three men who have accused him of sexual assault. The civil case will not go to trial.
Renewal:
HBO and A24’s Neighbors (for S2)
Cancellations:
Sofia Coppola’s film starring Kirsten Dunst
Trailers:
Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 4
New Cast: Ben Kingsley, Nick Offerman, and Matt Berry
Release: March 2027
Prime’s Off-Campus
Release: May 13
Hey Joe
Cast: James Franco (speaking Italian)
Release: this month
First look:
Apple’s What Happens at Night
Dir: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence
Release date:
AMC’s The Terror: Devil in Silver
Release: May 7
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Our Steve is getting his female counterpart. Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man) will play Alex in A Minecraft Movie sequel. Alex, who is one of the nine default playable skins in the game, is a fan-favorite character in the Minecraft lore alongside Steve.
The first film teased the fans with her arrival when Steve (played by Jack Black) meets a ginger-headed woman who introduces herself as Alex.
This also marks an interesting shift for Dunst, returning to a more playful, commercial role after her recent, hardened performances in Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024) and Jane Campion’s Netflix Western The Power of the Dog (2021).
Tidbits:
Fallout’s Ella Purnell is joining Nicholas Galitzine for The Return of Stanley Atwell, a seductive thriller feature from Hera Pictures (Hamnet) and written by Steven Soderbergh. A story of sex, passion, betrayal, and backstabbing, like most of the roles Purnell gravitates towards (Yellowjackets, Fallout), she’ll play the cunning Pamela, a character who, while appearing morally sound, has manipulative and self-serving intentions. Filming is set to begin shortly in the U.K.
Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke is trying on a new Netflix series for size. The God of the Woods is a multi-generational drama set in the Adirondacks that centers on the powerful but secretive Van Laar family. Hawke will play a trailblazing detective assigned to look into the mysterious family, and while she’s never outright played an investigator, she brings a quiet, observant intelligence to every role.
Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer) joins Apple TV’s live-action adaptation of Philip Kerr’s mystery book series Berlin Noir. The show will be based on Metropolis from the book series that follows a detective in the 1920s of Weimar Republic Berlin who must catch a serial killer targeting the city’s sex workers. No info has been released on Gunning’s role, but we hope her role will give her the chance to show off her explosive creep energy that she’s shown in Baby Reindeer (2024).
Casting tidbits:
Brad Pitt’s The Riders latest cast
This actor joins Glen Powell
Renée Rapp back in action
All those casting tidbits and an obit here.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
The most interesting film of the day is Wild Horse Nine from Martin McDonagh. Who has made a career of finding the absurdity in death.
In Three Billboards, it was the blistering grief of a cantankerous mother played by Frances McDormand. In The Banshees of Inisherin, it took the idea of an eye for an eye to a literal level. And in Seven Psychopaths… well, the title does the trick.
Wild Horse Nine picks up on this trend, seeing McDonagh regular Sam Rockwell in Bruges in Easter Island as a CIA officer tasked with keeping his partner, John Malkovich, in check. Hint, it does not go well. Trailer.
Searchlight releases November 6, 2026.
Vertical picks up North American rights to The Weight, starring Ethan Hawke (first look still) and Russell Crowe (first look still).
Synopsis:
In Oregon 1933, Samuel Murphy is torn from his daughter and sent to a brutal work camp. Warden Clancy tempts him with early release if he smuggles gold through deadly wilderness, but betrayal festers within the crew, and Murphy questions how far he’ll go to see his child again.
This is the narrative directorial debut of Padraic McKinley, and given the casting of two acting legends, this could be a historical drama that makes a big Oscar push. Releasing Sept. 18.
Tidbits:
Tribeca Films picks up the winner of Tribeca’s Special Jury Mention for Best U.S. Narrative Feature, Esta Isla (This Island). Directed by Cristian Carretero and Lorraine Jones Molina, it follows young lovers Bebo and Lola — both from opposite social circles in Puerto Rico — as they flee to a remote part of the island in the wake of a heinous murder. The film is adapted from the filmmaker’s short film of the same name. There’s an ethereal quality to the trailer for the 2014 short that you can see is developed in the first look images of the feature.
Evan and Gregg Spiridellis (StoryBots) are making their first animated feature, Space Unicorn. The film will follow a unicorn who wants to bring back joy to the drab city of Unicornopolis as she battles an evil techno-tyrant. The project marks a big milestone for the Spiridellis brothers, who began their careers creating children’s animation on YouTube.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Pijama time! Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín, the director and producing brothers behind Maria starring Angelina Jolie, Jackie starring Natalie Portman, and Spencer starring Kristen Stewart, have started a streaming service called pijama.
I sat down with Juan at SXSW to dissect why he created this amid the land of giants (e.g., Netflix, Disney+, etc.).
The thesis is simple: each year, there are hundreds of films at festivals that don’t get picked up. Or if they do get picked up, they won’t be available to everyone worldwide. So he built a streaming platform where you can upload your film for $100, and people around the world can watch. It’ll even do auto-AI translation on subtitles into 80 languages.
First onto the platform are some festival favorites, including Nasty Baby (2015) starring Kristen Wiig (I actually shot the BTS video for this during college), Gloria (2013), and Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus.
Prime Video India has just unveiled their biggest slate yet. Here are two projects that caught our attention. Including the first Hindi superhero series: https://theindustry.co/p/prime-video-india
ON THIS DAY
2019. Disney acquires 21st Century Fox for $71bn.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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