Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
Johnny Depp’s Master, Netflix’s Black Box, and The Greatest Story Never Told.
Let’s go!
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Prime’s Gen V season 2 is an adrenaline shot of young heroes forging their own worlds.
Will they descend into the glorious violence of The Boys universe? Or fight their way toward a noble path together?
Are they Harry Potter, Neo, or something more dangerous? Click here for more info.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Johnny Depp is producing and starring in The Master and Margarita w/ IN.2 Film.
Tim Fehlbaum (September 5) will direct Netflix’s Black Box.
28 Years Later Part 3 is greenlit. Cillian Murphy is in talks.
YouTube TV expanding with genre bundles and a major new sports tier.
Focus Features acquires Sundance’s The AI Doc from Oscar-winning Daniel Roher.
87North hires Braden Aftergood to help lead its film division.
National Geographic orders Best of the World with Antoni Porowski.
Peacock’s All Her Fault is its most-watched original ever with 46M hrs in 3 weeks.
Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine sets The Rise docuseries at Peacock.
Netflix teams with Story Syndicate on a Natalee Holloway docuseries.
Rob McGovern joins Versant as SVP of ad sales.
Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson return for the new Hunger Games film.
Stand-up comedian and voice actor Jeff Garcia (Jimmy Neutron) dies at 50.
Jared Hess boards On The End, starring Tim Blake Nelson.
Lucie Arnaz developing Lucy and Desi: The Greatest Story Never Told.
18Hz promotes Nick Romano to VP.
Channel 4 names Priya Dogra as new CEO.
Jonathan Entwistle directs Studiocanal’s Endless Night, an Agatha Christie reimagining.
Are they Harry Potter, Neo, or something more dangerous? Click here for more info.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Johnny Depp will produce and star in a new adaptation of the influential novel The Master and Margarita.
The project is backed by his company IN.2 Film in collaboration with Tribune Pictures. No writer or director has been attached yet.
Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, written between 1928 and 1940, is a satirical, metaphysical novel in which the Devil arrives in 1930s Moscow and upends the lives of its citizens while a parallel story of Pontius Pilate gradually reveals the book’s deeper meaning.
Funny enough, it inspired the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil and Depp, being a noted rocker himself, probably came across it that way.
Tim Fehlbaum (dir: September 5) must be in dusty, old school media heaven. He was just hired to direct Black Box for Netflix.
It’s a remake of the French film, following an audio engineer who specializes in isolating noises in black box recordings of airplane crashes. Fehlbaum’s September 5, captured the terror attack at the Munich Olympics from the POV of the reporters, really dived into the technical aspects of how to make sure they could broadcast. There’s something quite nice about the film, which takes as much care with the characterization of the over-worked news crew as it does with the nuts and bolts of 70s broadcast tech.
Check out the trailer for the OG French Black Box. It’ll be a good chance for Fehlbaum to add some flair of stylization.
They might finally get Cillian Murphy back for 28 Years Later Pt 3. As was always the plan from director Boyle, now that the third installment in his newly unearthed Zombie series is officially greenlit, Murphy is circling. The director once even joked that he was saving Murphy for the third film to get it financed.
Part 2 will arrive in theaters on January 16th next year.
The first film left us with a frankly absurd cliffhanger, here. A pretty gonzo scene in an otherwise fairly morose and grounded movie. You know what, it worked. I know I’ll be in the theater just to find out what the hell is going on.
Tidbits:
YouTube is accelerating its push to dominate television by adding customizable genre bundles and expanded sports options to YouTube TV. Nielsen’s latest data shows YouTube commanding about 13% of all U.S. TV screen viewing time, the highest of any distributor, while Netflix holds roughly 9%. YouTube TV will launch more than ten genre-focused subscription packages next year, including a major sports tier with ESPN networks, FS1, and NBC Sports Network. Add-ons like NFL Sunday Ticket remain available. Additional news, family, and entertainment bundles arrive later.
Focus Features is distributing Sundance title The AI Doc from Oscar-winning director Daniel Roher (dir. Navalny) and Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Daniel Kwan producing. The documentary feature is from the perspective of a soon-to-be father trying to learn the risks of the ever-evolving AI landscape. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist will play in theaters on March 27th, 2026, after its Sundance premiere this January.
Mini Tidbit:
87North has hired veteran producer Braden Aftergood (Nobody, Tulsa King) to help lead its film division. Reporting to Kelly McCormick, he brings experience from Balboa Productions, Eighty Two Films, and Film 44. His arrival accelerates 87North’s growth as it readies its film slate, including How To Rob a Bank, Violent Night 2, and Ballerina Overdrive.
Mario Gabelli’s firm owns 0.25% of Warner Bros. Discovery (5.7M shares, $160M). He says that he’s going to tell his clients to sell to Paramount at $30/share. This is mirroring David Ellison’s recent letter to shareholders.
Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski is taking his love for food abroad. From National Geographic, a new travel docuseries, Best of the World with Antoni Porowski, sees the chef travel from New York City to Paris to London, trying out not just Michelin star restaurants but authentic hole-in-the-wall cuisine. The series will premiere next year.
It may be All Her Fault, but Peacock isn’t complaining! The missing child mystery series led by Sarah Snook (Succession), Jake Lacy (The White Lotus), and Dakota Fanning (The Perfect Couple) is now the streamer’s most-watched original series ever, racking up 46M hours watched in just its first three weeks. It’s so darn twisty it’s addictive! Safe to assume Peacock will get another limited series out ASAP. All Her Fault trailer.
Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine’s new docuseries, The Rise, is headed to Peacock, charting the rapid growth and long-overdue recognition of women’s professional sports. The first film of the five-part series premieres next week on Peacock.
Netflix is partnering with Story Syndicate (Prod Co: Nat Geo’s Sally) on a three-part series on Natalee Holloway’s 2005 disappearance in Aruba, directed by Dani Sloane (The Menendez Brothers) and Matthew Galkin (Murder in Big Horn). Featuring Beth Holloway on camera for the first time, it includes new footage, unreleased audio, and unreported details.
Veteran exec from TelevisaUnivision and WarnerMedia, Rob McGovern has been named Versant’s SVP of ad sales for its digital platforms. He’ll oversee brands like Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, and others as Versant expands beyond cable post-Comcast spinoff.
Cancellations:
Prime’s Hotel Costiera (cancelled after S1)
But Fremantle is shopping
Trailers:
A24’s The Drama
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Zendaya
Release date: April 3
Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender (S2)
Release: 2026
Paramount’s Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)
Dir: Billie Eilish and James Cameron
Release: March 20
HBO’s Happy and You Know It (doc)
Dir: Penny Lane (Hail Satan?)
Release: Dec 25
Netflix’s Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine (S2)
Money Heist spin-off
Release: May 15, 2026
Release dates:
Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer (S4)
Release: Feb 5
Are they Harry Potter, Neo, or something more dangerous? Click here for more info.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
All hail the Mockingjay!
Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are officially reprising their roles as Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, respectively, in the upcoming prequel film The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping.
After the characters appeared in the adapted book’s epilogue, alongside Haymitch (will Woody Harrelson return?), fans began heavily speculating on the possibility, which will now officially play out on the big screen.
Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is currently filming and set to hit theaters everywhere on November 20th 2026.
Mini Tidbits:
Jeff Garcia, stand-up comedian and voice of Sheen Estevez in Jimmy Neutron and Planet Sheen, has died at 50. Known for improvisational comedy, he also voiced characters in Barnyard, Happy Feet, and Rio. Sheen was a real oddball and played perfectly by Mr. Garcia. Clip.
Rafe Spall (Black Mirror) leads Steven Moffat’s Channel 4 comedy-drama Number 10, with Jenna Coleman (Doctor Who) and Katherine Kelly (Mr Bates vs The Post Office). Set inside a fictional Downing Street, following the prime minister and staff as they juggle personal chaos and political crises in Britain’s most notorious workplace. That sure sounds like VEEP.
Iain Armitage, the titular actor behind CBS’s Young Sheldon, will guest star in the sixth season of Ghosts, where he’ll play a “heightened version of himself”. Armitage’s next go on the network will air mid-April 2026.
Are they Harry Potter, Neo, or something more dangerous? Click here for more info.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Jared Hess (dir: Napoleon Dynamite, Minecraft) boards On The End as EP. The film stars Tim Blake Nelson.
I understand why Hess liked the film; there’s a raw absurdity to it that remains very grounded.
Official synopsis:
Tom (Nelson), a down-on-his-luck mechanic, finds unexpected love with a fellow outcast named Freckles, but their romance is put in jeopardy when the town of Montauk conspires to forcibly remove him from his home.
We don’t often see Nelson in a lead role, and even rarer in a romance. But his ability to play both grounded and unhinged is a fruitful combination that allows the small-town-set film to seem Shakespearean.
Tidbits:
You may Love Lucy, but do you know her? Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, is working on Lucy and Desi: The Greatest Story Never Told. It’s a series that doesn’t just go behind the scenes of the iconic I Love Lucy (1951-57) but will take a closer look at both their upbringings and the conflicts that led to the comedic duo’s calamitous divorce. Arnaz is partnering with former NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt as an EP.
Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes) joins short film Largo as EP. The Oscar-contending project follows a Syrian refugee boy who builds a boat to return home. Starring newcomer Zack Elsokar, it’s produced by Slick Films (The Silent Child) and will screen in U.K. schools during Refugee Week 2026.
Walter Hamada’s 18Hz has promoted Nick Romano to VP and Ana Tenewitz as Creative Executive. Romano previously worked in development at New Line Cinema, and Tenewitz joins from Imagine, also with a strong development background. Paramount recently renewed its deal with 18Hz, whose next release is Primate in January 2026.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Jonathan Entwistle (The End of the F***ing World) will direct StudioCanal’s Endless Night, a modern Agatha Christie reimagining scripted by Emily Siegel (We Were Never Here). The thriller follows a hustler drawn into deception with an unstable heiress. Entwistle recently scored a theatrical hit with Sony’s Karate Kid: Legends, which revived the franchise and earned $116M worldwide.
Major UK player Channel 4 has named Priya Dogra, a former top exec at Sky and WBD EMEA, as its new CEO, replacing the interim Jonathan Allan. As Dogra moves to Channel 4 beginning next spring, Sky expands the role of studio boss Cécile Frot-Coutaz to absorb advertising oversight formerly handled by Dogra. Holding the position of Sky’s Chief Advertising & New Revenue Officer for a little over a year now, Frot-Coutaz will not directly replace Dogra but take on her outgoing slate.
Japan is expanding its film incentive program for overseas productions in 2026. METI will introduce multi-year subsidies, letting productions report expenses across two fiscal years instead of being limited to one. The rebate remains up to 52% for large international projects. Past supported titles include The Smashing Machine, Rental Family, and Drops of God season two.
Tidbit:
Danish Television studio Apple Tree Productions will close at the end of 2026. Founders Piv Bernth and Lars Hermann cite difficult market conditions in Denmark. The company will finish two final series, Rivals and The Best of Families, before moving on to new ventures.
Nigel Warner will replace longtime CEO John McVay of Pact (UK’s trade association for independent production companies) on March 2. A former MPA policy consultant with ITV and government experience, Warner inherits major industry challenges, including tax credits, AI, streamer relations, Equity negotiations, and rising indie closures.
ON THIS DAY
1987. Wall Street is released.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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