Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Train Dreams, Black Bears, and a comedy.
Let’s go!
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THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Starz Q2 revenue drops in first post-Lionsgate quarter.
Netflix reteams with Jessica Alba for an R-rated (true) comedy.
Searchlight wins Incidents thriller spec.
Black Bear hires David Spitz to lead US theatrical distribution.
Amazon orders Joseph of Egypt from The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins.
Netflix announces three adult animated series.
Paramount is in talks with Stranger Things’ Duffer Brothers for a mega-deal.
Clint Bentley adds Nick Cave song to Netflix’s Train Dreams.
Fifth Season is developing an unscripted Confronting Evil series.
Baz Luhrmann casts Isla Johnston as Joan of Arc.
Tiffany Haddish joins indie thriller The Girl in the River.
Fantastic Fest 2025 lineup includes Black Phone 2 & Vicious.
TIFF reinstates The Road Between Us.
Josephine Decker to direct Sinéad O’Connor biopic.
Prime Video Germany remaking El Juego de Las Llaves.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Netflix teams back up with Jessica Alba for an R-rated comedy. No title yet, but Alba will star as some sort of “alpha-female executive” type in the absurdist world of business retreats.
Since her breakout film Honey (2003), Alba has done a bunch of rom-coms. This is the first time she’s starred in a true comedy. This move tracks as Netflix’s thriller Trigger Warning starring Alba was the top film on streaming when it was released and has now hit 91M views.
This is a continued example of how Netflix’s top-viewed films operate outside of the typical star system.
Alba has not had top billing on a domestically released film since A24’s Barely Lethal (2015), which did $933K worldwide.
Alba is still wildly popular from Fantastic Four and Sin City. Netflix’s ability to recognize a former actor’s streaming star power—like they did with Adam Sandler—is the best in the industry.
Alba’s Metalmark produces, and Madison Vanderberg (Black List 2024) will write.
Starz Q2 2025 earnings. Their first quarter since the split with Lionsgate:
$319.7M revenue
↓7.4%
$221M streaming revenue
↓5.7%
$42.5M net loss
Down from $4.2M profit last year
19.1M North American subs
↓ 520K (total subs) from last quarter
↓410K (US subs) from last quarter
Starz ended Q2 with $573.5M net debt. They also paid Lionsgate $389.9M as part of the separation. On the plus side, the release of Outlander: Blood of my Blood promises loads of new subs for Q3. And they have Power Book IV: Force Season 3 coming up Nov 7.
Amazon teams with The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins and orders Joseph of Egypt series. This seems like a no-brainer after Amazon took US theatrical and streaming rights for The Chosen, which has done over $47M domestically across three theatrical releases.
Synopsis:
Betrayed by jealous brothers, Joseph defies all expectations and rises to incredible power in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. But his past catches up with him.
Jenkins will EP while Craig Wright (writer: Lost) will write and EP. Filming for the 8-episode series is underway in New Mexico.
Tidbits:
In a fierce 11-bid showdown, Searchlight Pictures (Poor Things) scores Incidents, a psychological thriller spec from William Gillies, the writer behind SXSW standout Hallow Road. The film is said to follow a woman who narrowly escapes an attempted abduction, who, after, vows to find her kidnapper and discover why she was targeted.
Producer-financier Black Bear (Sing Sing, Longlegs, Conclave) has tapped David Spitz to serve as their Head of US Theatrical Distribution. As Black Bear enters the theatrical distribution game, Spitz brings nearly 20 years of experience as the former President of Distribution for Lionsgate. The veteran exec will oversee the theatrical release of up to 12 films per year.
Netflix is upping its adult animation game. The streamer that brought us the masterful BoJack Horseman and the cancelled too soon Inside Job actually has a pretty good record to hold up.
They announced three new shows:
Long Story Short
Cast: Abbi Jacobson, Ben Feldman
Release: Aug 22nd
A new show by the creator of BoJack Horseman, it follows a family for decades as the kids grow up.
Haunted Hotel
Cast: Will Forte, Eliza Coupe, & Skyler Gisondo
Release: Sept 19th
A single mother of two runs a haunted hotel.
Strip Law
Cast: Adam Scott & Janelle James
Release: Feb 2026
Scott plays a lawyer who teams with a magician to win cases.
Mini Tidbits:
Paramount is gunning for Netflix royalty, the Duffer Brothers, with a nine-figure deal big enough to shake the Upside Down. The Stranger Things creators are in talks for a massive overall deal that would include both streaming and theatrical feature films for Paramount. Nothing has been confirmed. But the upside for brothers is that with Paramount, their films would actually land in theaters.
Tubi has hired former TikTok global creator marketing head Kudzi Chikumbu as VP creator partnerships, expanding deals with MrBeast and other mega creators from the new media space.
The $750M CA Tax credit is working! The California Film Commission is reporting that last month saw a 4x jump in the number of film applications. Yay.
Netflix’s Train Dreams is getting a touch-up. As director Clint Bentley preps for a theatrical release, he’s adding a song to the end credits by Nick Cave, who created it specifically for the film. Add this to the Oscar categories Netflix is putting this up for. We’re excited to hear it.
Peacock’s The Traitors became a global phenomenon. Now NBC is moving forward with a series order of The Traitors with both civilian contestants and Alan Cumming returning as host.
Fifth Season is developing an unscripted TV adaptation of Bill O’Reilly and Josh Hammer’s upcoming book Confronting Evil: Assessing the Worst of the Worst, spotlighting 12 history’s most notorious figures through the lens of evil and human indifference, including all the big ones like Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan.
Pixar is said to be reducing the salaries of 100+ leaders at the company. The reductions will only occur when they’re in between projects.
Trailers:
Neon’s It Was Just an Accident
Won: Cannes Palme d’Or
Release: Oct 15
Hulu’s The Man in My Basement
Cast: Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe
Premiere: TIFF
Release: Fall 2025
Magnet’s Rabbit Trap
Cast: Dev Patel
Premiere: Sundance
Release: Sept 12
Podcast interview with director Bryn Chainey and producer Lawrence Inglee (Swiss Army Man)
Lionsgate’s Fairyland
Cast: Emilia Jones, Scoot McNairy, Maria Bakalova
Prod Co: American Zoetrope
Premiere: Sundance
Release: Oct 10
In Whose Name?
Kanye West doc
Release: Sept 19
Release Date:
Paramount+’s Mayor of Kingstown (S4)
Premiere: October 26
Peacock’s All Her Fault
Premiere: Nov 6
Netflix’s The Pink Marine
Prod: Norman Lear
Premiere: Oct 9
Netflix’s Nobody Wants This (Season 2)
Release: Oct 23rd
MGM+’s Robin Hood
Release: late 2025
Sony’s Screen Gems’ Sisu: The Road to Revenge
Prime’s Vought Rising (The Boys' prequel series)
1950s costumes, “Soldier Boy” First look here
Paramount dates some titles and shuffles some release dates:
The Running Man
Nov 7 → Nov 14, 2025 (to avoid Predator: Badlands)
Primate
Jan 9, 2026
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Jan 16, 2026
Also, Vicious starring Dakota Fanning, will now release on October 10, 2025. It was moved from a Feb 28, 2025 theatrical release. This one has a hard road, but it will finally make its debut at Fantastic Fest. Afterwards, it will be on Paramount+ Oct 10th.
Also, Paramount is teaming with their top creator, Taylor Sheridan, on a 450,000-square-foot studio, the biggest in Texas.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Leila George will join Jake Gyllenhaal in Road House 2, directed by Ilya Naishuller with a script by Will Beall. This is a follow-up to Amazon's 2024 reboot. Leila George is actually the daughter of Vincent D'Onofrio.
She played the young version of Cate Blanchett in Apple TV+’s Disclaimer and had the wild ability to flip between an almost psychopathic cunning and a vulnerable victim. She should be a good foil to Gyllenhaal's rough-and-ready Elwood Dalton.
Rounding out the cast as the villain is wrestler turned actor Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy), long rumored but finally signed on. Amazon's road to Road House is probably enough for its own documentary, and the sequel was fraught with its own problems, such as the exit of Guy Ritchie as director.
But with strong casting like this, it looks like the road goes on forever and the party never ends.
Baz Luhrmann’s next film, Jehanne d’Arc, with Warner Bros., has cast its title character. Isla Johnston will play Joan of Arc. Johnston was wonderful as the young version of Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queen’s Gambit.
Jehanne is described as:
An epic story about Joan of Arc, the young French peasant who believed god had sent her to lead an army. She believed she would save her country during the Hundred Years War.
It’s an incredible role that hinges on Johnston’s blinding self-confidence.
Tiffany Haddish joins indie crime thriller The Girl in the River. The thriller follows a seasoned criminologist (Ralph Macchio) and a young female psychologist drawn to a remote Mississippi town to solve a child’s murder and her twin’s disappearance. Haddish is apparently playing an unknown key role in this Southern Gothic murder mystery. And if you think she can only do comedy, just check out On the Count of Three.
Haddish will also star in Haunted Heist, which premieres at Fantastic Fest.
Mini Tidbits:
Boyd Holbrook (Logan) joins Netflix’s Extraction series as team leader David Ibarra opposite Omar Sy (Jurassic World). Glen Mazzara showruns the Libya-set thriller from the Russo brothers.
Channel 4’s new comedy, Schooled, casts Bridgerton breakout actress Charithra Chandran. The new show sounds like the UK’s version of Abbott Elementary.
From the Love Island villa to the emergency room, host and reality star Ariana Madix (Vanderpump Rules) will have a guest role on the second season of NBC medical comedy, St. Denis Medical.
FESTIVALS
Fantastic Fest lineup 2025. Top films include the world premieres of some studio genre favorites:
Universal’s Black Phone 2
Sony’s Screen Gems’ Sisu: Road to Revenge
Paramount’s Vicious
Lionsgate’s The Strangers – Chapter 2
IFC Films’ The Whistle
Dir: Corin Hardy (The Nun)
Cast: Nick Frost
Here are some others that caught our attention:
Ben Wheatley (Dir: High-Rise, Meg 2) directs Bulk.
Wild synopsis:
A scientist's string theory experiment goes wrong when his brane explodes. Corey Harlan must find him and the brane's core in a mysterious house where doors lead to other worlds, guided by the dimensional being Aclima.
A post-Barbarian Justin Long gets into two horror films:
Coyotes
Synopsis:
An LAPD officer assigned to his old neighborhood is drawn back into gang life after his brother witnesses a brutal murder linked to the city’s infamous gang task force.
Night Patrol
Distributor: Shudder + RLJE Films (Clown in the Cornfield)
Synopsis:
A kinetic thriller with teeth led by real-life partners Justin Long and Kate Bosworth.
Real-life partners?! Smells like Neon’s Together.
And Bad Haircut just has a great synopsis:
On what will become the strangest night of his life, Billy’s new haircut escalates into a fight for survival as the eccentric behavior of his local barber, Mick, slowly gives way to reveal a deeply troubled mind.
Fantastic Fest full lineup here.
TIFF has re-invited The Road Between Us to the festival. They had previously pulled the film due to rights issues over the footage. This was highly contentious, and you can read TIFF’s CEO’s explanatory letter here.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Turns out nothing compares to Hollywood’s love of a musical biopic, and next up is the polarizing ‘90s singer Sinéad O’Connor. Josephine Decker (Madeline’s Madeline) is already attached to helm the project from a script by Irish screenwriter Stacey Gregg (Here Before).
Decker’s Sundance biopic Shirley (2020, trailer) was a feverish, intimate portrait of a woman as brilliant as she was volatile. The film explored the chaotic life of prolific horror writer Shirley Jackson, not told chronologically but instead dipping in and out of her fractured reality and creative mind. If Decker uses a similar approach, it could be a compelling way to capture not just the events of Sinéad’s life, but the charged emotional landscape behind her art and controversies. (“Nothing Compares 2 U” music video).
Decker’s knack for capturing the messy greatness of complicated, creative women makes her a fitting choice to tackle such an ambitious project in today’s oversaturated musical biopic era. See-Saw films (The Power of the Dog) and Irish banner Nine Daughters (Lady Macbeth) are producing.
Now we just need Emma Corrin to clear her schedule!
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