Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Jennifer Lawrence’s Month, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s morals, and a Hit Man.
Let’s go!
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Set in the world of Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone, Paramount’s Marshals is a Montana-set procedural that is a minefield of gangs, drugs, and a million ways to die in the west.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Apple lands Jennifer Lawrence-starring romcom One Month Mark.
Maggie Gyllenhaal will write and direct Warner Bros.’ Creation Lake.
Netflix develops a Hit Man series with Glen Powell + Richard Linklater as EPs.
Lionsgate buys equity in Runway AI to develop a short-form series.
AMC raises $150M in cash.
Jason Fuchs will write Paramount’s next Transformers film.
HBO Max develops family drama Six Days to Sunday.
Amazon MGM develops The Boyfriend, a standalone follow-up to The Girlfriend.
Prime Video moves forward with romance adaptation Things We Never Got Over.
Hulu develops Music Theories, an American Vandal-style comedy.
Jeff Shell settles his $150M lawsuit with gambler R.J. Cipriani.
Sean Astin joins high school sports drama Will to Win.
Peter Sarsgaard joins season 3 of HBO’s The Last of Us.
Clive Owen teams with The Tribe filmmaker Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi.
Yesterday’s correct answer: Donnie Darko, Noah Wyle plays a professor.
45% got it correct.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Apple has found its lead in Jennifer Lawrence for their hot romcom package, One Month Mark, from first-time screenwriter Sophie Fleur de Bruijn and The North Road Company’s Chernin Entertainment (Ford v. Ferrari).
The film follows two individuals: she has never made it past a month in a relationship, and he has never gone longer than a month without one.
This isn’t Lawrence’s first rodeo with Apple; she starred in the beautifully underrated PTSD drama Causeway (2022) and just wrapped the highly anticipated Scorsese-directed thriller What Happens at Night, also with the studio.
The Die My Love actress has an obvious natural knack for comedy, seen not just through her countless viral press moments, but finally on screen in the Netflix relationship comedy No Hard Feelings (2023, trailer).
Warner Bros. believes in Maggie Gyllenhaal. Shortly after the premiere of her divisive The Bride!, Gyllenhaal is already attached to write and direct an adaptation of Rachel Kushner’s novel Creation Lake.
The story follows Sadie Smith, a spy-for-hire who infiltrates an environmental collective in rural France, only to begin questioning her own morals and whether she can finish her mission.
While The Bride! was a bold, maximalist swing, both that film and Gyllenhaal’s acclaimed directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, were deeply interested in women wrestling with the uncomfortable truths they uncover about themselves. Gyllenhaal is drawn to intelligent but deeply complex and self-destructive women, difficult to categorize, and constantly at war with their own minds.
Tidbits:
Amazon MGM is developing The Boyfriend, a follow-up series to the Olivia Cooke-led (House of the Dragon) The Girlfriend. Adapted from the novel by Michelle Frances, the original psychological thriller followed a twisted clash between a man’s seemingly two-faced girlfriend (played by Cooke) and his dangerously possessive mother (played by Robin Wright). While little is known of the plot, The Boyfriend will be an entirely standalone story with new characters.
Netflix is expanding the world of Hit Man into a series. Glen Powell and Richard Linklater are EPs, while Stephen Falk (creator of Hulu’s You’re the Worst) writes the script from Prod Co AGC Television (Hit Man). No word on whether Powell will reclaim his role, but the film was bolstered by the multiple dimensions of chemistry that Powell had with Adria Arjona.
Jason Fuchs (Wri: HBO Max’s It: Welcome to Derry) has been tapped to write the new Transformers film by Paramount. The new film will be a continuation of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023), in which Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) was offered a job at G.I. Joe in the post-credits scene.
More projects in dev:
Universal International’s Such a Nice Girl
HBO Max’s Six Days to Sunday
Hulu’s Music Theories
For all those and more, click here.
Mini Tidbits:
Former Paramount Skydance president Jeff Shell has finally settled his $150M lawsuit with Las Vegas gambler R.J. Cipriani. The multiple lawsuits stemmed from allegations that Shell shared confidential corporate information. The ordeal contributed to Shell’s exit from Paramount earlier this year.
Harbor Lights Entertainment, formerly a Redstone property and now owned by the Ellison family, which consists of 13 movie theaters located throughout the Northeast and Midwest, has been sold to the multinational exhibitor Kinepolis for $30M.
Stanley Tucci is traveling again! National Geographic is officially moving forward with Tucci in Great Britain, a spinoff series of the Emmy-nominated Tucci in Italy.
George Miller (no relation) is pitching a new Mad Max movie. Apparently, Warner Bros., which released the previous Mad Max films, has passed.
AMC raises $150M in capital. AMC had a decent Q1, up 19% in revenue with a $6M net loss.
Lionsgate has acquired equity in Runway AI with plans to produce a short-form series. To read my short AI rant, click here. If not, carry on.
Renewal:
Apple TV’s Widow’s Bay (renewed for season 2)
Trailers:
Paramount Pictures’ Heart of the Beast
Dir: David Ayer (Fury)
Cast: Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons, Anna Lambe
Release: September 25
Pixar’s Gatto
Cast: Ismail Elsene, Laurence Fishburne, Mark Ruffalo
Release: March 5, 2027
HBO Max’s Life, Larry, and the Pursuit Of Unhappiness
EP: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama
Cast: Larry David, Jon Hamm
Release: June 26
IFC’s Night Nurse
Release: July 10
Dogwoof’s Sundance-winning documentary Birds of War
Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie
Release: July 9
AMC’s The Walking Dead: Dead City S3
Cast: Lauren Cohan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Release: July 26
Gebeka Films’ Animation Julián
Premiere: June 23
First Look:
Apple TV’s Slow Horses S6
Cast: Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas
Release: Sept 16
Paramount+’s Lioness S3
Cast: Zoe Saldaña, Nicole Kidman
Release: Aug 2
Release dates:
Lionsgate’s Karoshi
Cast: Teo Yoo, Isabel May, Bill Camp
Release: January 29, 2027
Gangs, drugs, & a million ways to die in the west. Click here for more info.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
In his first film role since becoming SAG-AFTRA’s president, Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings) has joined Will to Win, a high school sports drama feature. The film will follow a young softball player (played by newcomer Isabel DeRoy-Olson) who, after losing her parents, finds herself joining her new school’s boys’ baseball team under the protection and guidance of her coach (Astin).
From The Goonies to the unbelievably earnest Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, and even his short-lived Stranger Things character Bob, who was likable to a fault, this new role feels perfectly in line with the wholesome screen persona audiences have come to expect from Astin.
Filming on Will to Win is ongoing in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Mini Tidbits:
Paul Anthony Kelly (FX’s Love Story) joins the cast of The Housemaid (2025) sequel, The Housemaid’s Secret. Based on the novel of the same name, the film will pick up as Millie (Sydney Sweeney) takes a job for a woman she’s never met. Kelly will play Douglas Garrick, a controlling billionaire CEO.
Winter is no longer coming; we are in the bleak midwinter. The Peaky Blinders sequel series begins its casting announcements with a strong start, adding Conleth Hill, the Game of Thrones actor behind Westeros’ resident master manipulator and fan-favorite character Lord Varys. The BBC and Netflix spinoff will take place a decade after WWII, where the race to rebuild Birmingham inevitably turns bloody.
Isla Fisher (Now You See Me) and Jane Krakowski (30 Rock) join Larry David’s HBO sketch show Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness (trailer). The show was made in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. and will be a satire of the major events in American history.
Megan Lawless (Obsession) stars in indie psychological drama Ping. The film follows Annie (Lawless), who joins a wellness startup that suddenly spirals into obsession, isolation, and collapse. This will be the feature debut of writer-director Richie Gordon.
Peter Sarsgaard (The Bride!) joins season 3 of HBO’s The Last of Us. He is playing Amon, one of the leaders of The Seraphites – a fanatical cult that will play a major role in Abby Anderson’s (Kaitlyn Dever) story, which will be the primary focus of the final season of The Last of Us.
Gangs, drugs, & a million ways to die in the west. Click here for more info.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
The 2026 Tribeca Festival is shortly coming to a close, revealing the few titles that make up this year’s competition award winners.
Daniel Blake Schwartz’s Cotton Fever won Best Feature and Best Cinematography in the U.S. Narrative section.
Rodrigue Jean’s Labrador - Autopsy of Silence won Best International Narrative Feature and Best Cinematography for the international section.
Steve Happi’s Jail Time Record won Best Documentary as well as Best New Documentary Director.
Carlitos Ruíz-Ruíz’s Summer of Three won Best Screenplay and Best Performance (Marcel Ruiz) for a U.S. Narrative Feature.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Clive Owen’s newest film is with Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi. OK, if you just went, who?! Run, do not walk, to see his 2014 Cannes film called The Tribe. It’s in Ukrainian Sign Language with no subtitles and follows a school of deaf teens. Each scene is a long take, and it’s hyper-violent, gritty, and sexual in a way that’s shocking and poetic. We don’t know what they’re cooking up, but we can’t wait.
James Gray (Ad Astra) had one of the best films at Cannes this year with Paper Tiger, starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson. Now he’s back with a new film from producer Rodrigo Teixeira (Call Me by Your Name, The Witch). It’s about the US and the current political situation. Not too much to go on, but Gray is a chameleon of many genres, and his filmmaking has a classical Hollywood style that burrows into intimate stories. Shooting in 2027.
Disney+ is making Canadian originals with comedy Knighted and true crime series I’m Not Coming Back. Disney+ launched in Canada in 2019, but it never had a local production until now. Knighted follows a missing person’s case that spirals into a documentary-style investigation of the dark secrets of a local medieval dinner theatre. I’m Not Coming Back will follow the story of two armed criminals who went on a killing spree in 2019 that turned into one of the largest-scale manhunts in Canada.
LA and Toronto-based Quiver Distribution (Crisis) picks up domestic rights to cyberpunk action thriller Kill Code. A crazy concept, the film takes place in a crime-ravaged future where a power-hungry major corporation infiltrates the prison system, making criminals the new law enforcers. I’m not sure how that could end well. Kill Code will hit theaters on July 24.
Mini Tidbits:
Michael Giacchino (Composer: Ratatouille) boards Brad Bird’s (Dir: The Incredibles) upcoming Netflix animation, Ray Gunn.
Ben Young (Dir: Hounds of Love) is directing a film adaptation of Stephen King’s short story Mister Yummy.
ON THIS DAY
1968. US premiere of Rosemary’s Baby.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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