Jason Bateman Die Hard
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
A Cover Story on Die Hard and Jason Bateman.
In The Industry News: J.J. Abrams and The Rock. A24’s King. Mattel’s view.
Actor Spotlight: Alana Haim is a mastermind, and Richard Gere is reporting for duty.
Indie Filmmaker Spotlight/International News: It’s an Ochi! Luca Guadagnino’s master. Space Cowboy.
Let’s go!
Jason Bateman plays a terrorist in Netflix’s new Christmas action film Carry On.
Perhaps Bateman’s post-Ozark legacy is to revel in the netherworld of evil men who want, in totality, to control their world.
Here’s the official synopsis:
A mysterious traveler (Bateman) blackmails a young TSA agent (Taron Egerton) into letting a dangerous package slip through security and onto a Christmas Day flight.
There is a pantheon of these holiday action films, of which Die Hard (1988) is the best.
That film’s arch-villain is a terrorist named Hans Gruber, played by the late Alan Rickman, whose European slimeball hyper-intelligent mastermind was magnetizing. He controlled not only the events on screen, an orchestrated attack on a building to steal $640M in negotiable bearer bonds, but also the audience’s gaze.
Bateman has a similar effect, moving from his nice-guy persona in Arrested Development to Marty Bryrde in Ozark, the genius accountant who begins to place little value on human lives and the corruption of his spirit.
He is the perfect actor to embody Carry On’s mystery traveler, a foil for the TSA agent.
It’s a dynamic that Die Hard plays with well. Craig Maizen (Writer: Chernobyl, The Last of Us), on his podcast, broke this down:
“Die Hard [is] a celebration of the common man against the snobby thinkers of the world… plotting and scheming the way that smart people do. They can manipulate. They can fool you. But in the end you’ll beat them with your heart and muscle.”
That’s what we seem to have in Carry On, with Egerton’s TSA agent as the everyman serving as an audience surrogate.
If this film can learn anything from Die Hard, it's the genre, at its best, foregrounds the value of the core relationships in our lives over personal selfishness, using the mechanism of the action sequences for character development.
If it can nail the character growth, it could be a winner.
For More:
Carry On trailer.
Die Hard trailer - dominated by Bruce Willis one-liners.
Die Hard 2, like the first movie but in an airport (trailer)
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Do you smell what JJ and The Rock are cooking? Dwayne Johnson shared a (kind of douchey/heartfelt) Instagram post about meeting up with everyone's early 2000s favorite director J.J. Abrams.
“We raised our glass and toasted to … Yup, this one is gonna be fun. JJ & DJ. From the mind of Zak Penn.”
Soft launching the pair's new outing written apparently by Zak Penn (Ready Player One, Free Guy).
We don't really know what they were toasting about, but there are rumors that it's an 80s throwback sci-fi.
It's a great writer and a brand new detached IP, so Abrams can go wild, he looks like he's just about to go on an upswing after sitting in the penalty box for The Last Skywalker (2017). Hopefully the Rock shows up to the set for this one.
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A24 has acquired the rights to adapt Stephen King's bestseller Fairy Tale into a 10-episode series, with Paul Greengrass (dir: Captain Phillips) and J.H. Wyman (co-showrunner: Fringe) expanding the original script.
Greengrass is expected to direct, although his deal is not finalized, and Wyman will serve as showrunner. Universal Pictures initially secured the film rights due to its relationship with Greengrass but ultimately let it go, allowing A24 to take over.
The story follows 17-year-old Charlie Reade, who inherits a key to a portal leading to a world of good versus evil.
Fairy Tale was kind of King's escapist lockdown project. He wrote it during COVID and it got rave reviews when it was released in 2022. It was immediately snapped up and optioned like it usually seems to go with anything King touches. No word yet on production dates etc. But we will keep an eye on it.
Tidbits:
FilmLA shows how shoot days for feature film production have increased in LA and decreased for TV production for Q3 2024 compared to last year:
Feature Films Q3 2023 → Q3 2024
Production days in LA: 376 → 476
↑ 26.6%
The five-year average is down 48%.
TV Q3 2023 → Q3 2024
Production days in LA: 2225 → 1817
↓ 18.3%
The five-year average is down 53.2%
Maybe it's a pipe dream, but to bring back production to California, the state’s film incentive needs to be competitive with the rest of the country and the world, especially for indie films that often get shafted.
Armory Films (production/finance company: The Peanut Butter Falcon, Mudbound) has optioned The Girl Who Was Taken, a novel that sold 1 Million copies and has 35K ratings on Amazon.
Here's the novel’s synopsis:
Two High school seniors go missing after a beach party in their small town. Police launch a massive search, but hope is almost lost--until one escapes from a bunker deep in the woods...A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has made her a celebrity. It's a triumphant story, except for one inconvenient detail: the other senior is still missing.
Brandon and Justin Weber are writing the screenplay.
Tyler Perry’s Studio hires an Executive Creator of Scripted and Unscripted, Courtney Glaude, who wrote and directed the haunting BET film The Reading (2023, starring Mo'Nique). As part of the overall deal Claude will be writing and directing a new feature A Love, about the origins of domestic violence.
Perry stated:
“Courtney is a creative force to be reckoned with… We’re so excited to get in business with him and to see what his imagination will bring to the table here at the studio.”
Glaude has previously written and directed for Perry’s many TV shows.
Mattel Films is developing a live-action View-Master movie with Sony Pictures and Todd Black’s Escape Artists. How the hell are they going to make a movie out of it, we don't have a clue. More stretches from Mattel are sure to follow. They are currently developing 45 projects based on their IP after Barbie made Billions.
After two years as CW President, Dennis Miller has officially stepped down effective on Oct. 31st. Miller previously oversaw all business and programming shortly after the network was acquired by Nexstar. The news comes as a slight surprise, considering he recently re-upped his contract through 2027, with the former President of Entertainment Brad Schwartz expected to replace him.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Alana Haim is starring in two new films. The character she played in PT Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, her acting debut, personified persnicketiness.
Here’s the breakdown of her new films:
Dir: Kelly Reichardt (First Cow)
Co-Star: Josh O’Connor (Challengers)
Distributor: Mubi
Synopsis: A daring art theft set against backdrop of the Vietnam War and the women’s liberation movmement.
Dir: Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario)
Co-star: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson
Studio: A24
Synopsis: In the days leading up to their wedding (Zendaya +Pattinson), they end up in a crisis when unexpected revelations derail what one of them thought they knew of the other.
Alana Haim, who, previous to Licorice Pizza, was most well-known for her Grammy-nominated band Haim, is a young talent and an electric performer.
What’s amazing about her on-screen persona is that she floats effortlessly from sardonic to sublime. She captures a dream girl with a big heart and a contrarian with a short fuse all in one breath.
We can’t wait to see her in further films!
Richard Gere is reporting for duty!
Check out a first look photo of Gere in a new spy thriller, The Agency an adaptation of the French series Le Bureau des Légendes also starring Michael Fassbender.
Synopsis:
The Agency centers on Martian (Fassbender), a covert CIA agent who's ordered to abandon his undercover life and return to London station, answering to bureau chief Bosko (Gere), a former undercover agent himself. When the love he left behind reappears, romance reignites. His career, his real identity, and his mission are pitted against his heart; hurling them both into a deadly game of international intrigue and espionage.
While Gere’s career has flowed through genres, he previously starred as a retired CIA operative opposite Topher Grace in the action crime thriller The Double (2011, trailer).
Beyond Gere and Fassbender, George Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures is behind the series with Darkest Hour director, Joe Wright, attached for the first two episodes and brother writing duo Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (Ford v Ferrari) writing all ten episodes.
The Agency is set to premiere on Paramount+ with Showtime this fall.
Tidbits:
American Pie’s Seann William Scott is slated to join ABC’s upcoming multi-cam comedy series, Shifting Gears. Scott will star opposite Tim Allen (Home Improvement), the stubborn owner of a classic car restoration shop, and Kat Dennings (2 Broke Girls) as his estranged daughter. 20th Television is the studio behind the sitcom set to begin production this November.
Karl Glusman is the next actor cast in The Running Man.
Synopsis:
Set in 2025, the story follows a man named Ben Richards while he participates in a deadly game show, called The Running Man, which sees him declared an enemy of the state and hunted by a ground of murderous hitmen.
The film is directed by Edgar Wright and stars Glen Powell and Katy O'Brian (Love Lies Bleeding).
If Glusman’s name doesn’t ring a bell, his face will. He excelled in Alex Garland’s Devs (2020) and picked up a small role in Civil War (2024). But I really loved him in a movie that doesn’t yet have a distributor: Little Death (premiere: Sundance); he plays an unhinged drug dealer with a carefully crafted OCD. It was a wicked turn, and we hope he gets to take on more and more roles like this.
The Running Man releases on Nov 21st, 2025.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL
It’s not a Gremlin. It’s not a Lorax. It’s an Ochi!
A24’s The Legend of Ochi is set in a remote northern village, where a young girl, Yuri, is raised to never go outside after dark and to fear the reclusive forest creatures known as the ochi. When a baby ochi is left behind by its pack, she embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to reunite it with its family.
Ambitious writer/director Isaiah Saxon’s trailer for the animated long time in the making, The Legend of Ochi, has just dropped from A24 following a huge feature deal for the emerging filmmaker. The studio has often championed fresh and young new voices within the industry, apparently having been immediately blown away by Saxon’s screenplay.
Saxon called the feature:
“A movie about the mysteries of animal communication.”
Despite much online circulation, Saxon confirmed the film was handmade:
“Six years of handmade work: puppets, animatronics, matte paintings, and a bit of 3D animation. Every shot of the Baby Ochi in the trailer is a 100 percent animatronic puppet operated by seven people live. No AI was used in this film.”
Saxon co-founded the film and animation studio Encyclopedia Pictura and has been behind all of his short films and award-winning music videos for artists like Björk (Wanderlust mv) and Panda Bear (Boys Latin mv) experimenting with the use of animation in ways I have never seen before.
The cast is led by Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson (Midas Man), and frequent A24 actor Willem Dafoe with the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Endgame), another big get, also attached as executive producers.
While you do still have a lot of time, you have to check out The Legend of Ochi trailer, set to hit theaters everywhere Feb. 28th, 2025.
Luca Guadagnino (Dir: Challengers, Queer) is deep in the edit on Joie de Vivre a documentary about his master Bernardo Bertolucci (dir: Last Tango in Paris, The Conformist, The Last Emperor).
Guadagnino stated:
“A master is such because he, she, they, they let you understand you in a way that you might not have had the chance to understand yourself because they open up a sudden vision of yourself in a way that is unexpected,”
The film, like all of Guadagnino’s work, is deeply personal. I was lucky enough to catch Queer at NYFF, and it was a stunning deconstruction of Daniel Craig in his desperation for connection.
No word on a release date for the doc, but A24 is releasing Queer on November 27th. We’ll have more for you on that project before then!
Tidbits:
Dream Team, is an International, interspecies B-movie satire that seems to center on two hot interpol agents who unravel a mystery. The film premiered at Rotterdam and is produced by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow). Here’s the 90s cable tv show-esque trippy trailer.
Dream Job found. Space Cowboy, a recent doc that premiered at TIFF, showcases Joe Jennings's unique skill: a skydiving cameraman. Jennings is credited for this skill on such films as Charlie's Angels (2000) and xXx (2002). The first look clip is astonishing, and we hear the film centers on a good deal of grief, anchoring it as resonant.
Layla is a beautiful romance between a drag queen struggling with their identity from their traditional Arab upbringing. The film premiered at Sundance and BFI and was produced by Film4 and supported by BFI. Now that’s a production company/funder romance made in heaven. Trailer.
Wallace and Gromit’s second feature film is dropping on BBC this Christmas. Here is the trailer featuring the dastardly Feathers McGraw. The first, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit (2005), took an Oscar for Best Animated Film and grossed $192 M worldwide. The new movie, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, will be available on Netflix Jan 3 following its Christmas release.
ON THIS DAY
1968. Bullitt, directed by Peter Yates and starring Steve McQueen and Jacqueline Bisset, is 1st released.
See you Friday!
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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