Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Liam Neeson’s Comedy, Jake Gyllenhaal’s Code, and a Sickle.
Let’s go!
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Final Draft’s Big Break Contest prizes include $10,000 cash and a trip to Hollywood for meetings with industry professionals.
When you’re just starting out as a writer, connecting with agents and managers in the industry is a Herculean task.
Take it from Laura Kroeger, who was the Grand Prize Feature Winner in last year’s Big Break Contest:
“I don't live in LA, so my way into the industry had to be different. I didn't have the network or the ability to run into somebody at a supermarket or a bar or restaurant and make those connections.”
Maia Mulcahy, who won the Grand Prize in last year’s TV category, added:
“Anybody I was talking to didn't know me from Adam. I might think that I'm talented, but they probably meet hundreds of people a day, and what was going to set me apart?”
Without writing credits, what sets you apart is your ability to place in contests that the industry pays attention to.
Final Draft’s Big Break Contest attracts attention because the judges are made up of top industry professionals, including:
Anonymous Content
Trent Anderson - Literary Manager
Realm
Brian Spink - Literary Manager/Producer
Bellevue Productions
Jeff Portnoy - Literary Manager
Zack Zucker – Literary Manager
LIT Entertainment Group
Shelby Eggers - Literary Manager
Night Drive Management
Jon Hersh - Literary Manager
First Story Entertainment
Jason Lubin - Literary Manager
Story Driven
Peter Katz - Literary Manager/CEO
Mulcahy (TV winner) stated:
“Instead of asking managers, ‘please, can I have coffee with you?’ It's actually been set because I just won this competition.”
Previous Big Break Contest winners have signed with UTA, Anonymous Content, Heroes and Villains, REALM, Lit Management, Bellevue, Fourth Wall, and Zero Gravity.
Final Draft’s Big Break Contest prizes include $10,000 cash and a trip to Hollywood for meetings with industry professionals.
For More:
Final Draft’s Big Break Contest closes June 30th.
Submit your script here.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Liam Neeson embraces slapstick in Naked Gun reboot’s trailer.
Harrison Query lands seven-figure deal at Amazon MGM for Code Black.
Nikki Glaser sells MASH-inspired comedy to Paramount.
Paramount promotes Virginia Lazalde-McPherson as Chief Acquisitions Officer.
Zaslav’s pay changed ahead of WBD split.
Glenn Close and Billy Porter join Hunger Games prequel.
David Fincher’s Cliff Booth film adds Carla Gugino.
Linda Hamilton battles aliens again in Osiris.
Anderson .Paak’s K-POPS! acquired by Aura for January 2026 release.
Mubi sets Nov. 7 release for Die, My Love.
Liam Neeson returns in The Ice Road: Vengeance.
Amazon MGM to release Anurag Kashyap’s Nishaanchi theatrically.
Warner Bros. signs Bollywood remake deal.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Liam Neeson is funny! With the newest trailer for his Naked Gun reboot, he steps into the shoes of the late great Leslie Nielsen (Airplane! (1980), Naked Gun 1, 2 ½, 33 ⅓). Played on humorously by the fact that everyone in the force is apparently a descendant of the previous cast. The trailer has some promising gags, I have to admit, Liam Neeson shooting his gun in the air to use the bathroom got me to chuckle.
The original Naked Gun is a nonstop jokes-per-second spy thriller spoof that led to such films as Austin Powers (1997), Get Smart (2008), and Johnny English (2003).
Watch the new trailer here.
Neeson lamented:
“Naked Gun will either be the end of my so-called career or it’ll be another little avenue.”
We’ll see soon Aug 1st.
Everyone wants a piece of Harrison Query’s writing.
One of the biggest short story deals of all time, Amazon MGM Studios put up a hefty seven figures for the film rights to Code Black, a political thriller written by Query with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nine Stories on board to develop the feature.
Synopsis:
The country’s top heart surgeon is flown to D.C. to perform a high-stakes operation, finding himself led into a trap where his guile and genius become the only way to stop a plot that threatens both his family and the nation.
Query will adapt his own story, making this the second hugely high-profile sale for the writer in just the past two months. A24 picked up his drama series spec, Trigger Point, after a competitive six-way bidding.
Paramount Pictures has acquired a comedy inspired by the childhood game MASH, created by and starring Nikki Glaser, who co-wrote the film with Sean O’Connor. The story follows a woman whose childhood MASH game magically comes true, forcing her to reevaluate what “the perfect life” really means.
This marks Glaser’s feature writing debut following record-breaking success with her HBO special Someday You’ll Die.
David Zaslav’s balance sheet. The Warner Bros. Discovery CEO’s compensation package has changed, pending the company's split:
Cash Bonus: $22M → $6M
Additional Stock Options: 20.9M (current value $225M)
Annual equity cut from $23.5M → $7.5M
This will mean his annual salary will come down. Welcome news to the majority of shareholders who voted against his 2024 salary of $51.9M, the highest of any media executive. Even topping Netflix’s Ted Sarandos’ $49.8M.
Paramount promotes executive Virginia Lazalde-McPherson to Chief Acquisitions Officer for Showtime and MTV Entertainment, replacing Barbara Zaneri. After 25 years with Paramount, Zaneri is stepping down to focus on her nonprofit Gold Star Services Network, which largely supports families of the U.S. military. Lazalde-McPherson was most recently head of strategy and business operations and a key player in the integration of Showtime into Paramount+.
Mini Tidbits:
Vice Media has a new CEO in Adam Stotsky, a longtime NBCUniversal exec. Stotsky, while at NBCU, served as president of E! Entertainment and Esquire Network, joining Vice.
Lionsgate partners with DirecTV to launch Lionsgate Collection, a FAST (free ad-supported) channel driven by Lionsgate’s massive 20K title library.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures adds five to its board, including Jason Reitman (director: Saturday Night Live) and Teddy Schwarzman (founder: Black Bear Pictures).
One of Matthew Perry’s doctors, Salvador Plasencia, has pleaded guilty to the charge of illegally dosing him with ketamine. She will receive 15-21 months in prison. As opposed to her maximum charge if she’d gone to trial: 120 years.
Renewals:
Nat Geo’s Tucci In Italy (Season 2)
Release dates:
Good Deed Entertainment’s Looking Through Water
Cast: Michael Douglas
Release: Late summer
Netflix’s Untamed
Cast: Eric Bana, Sam Neill
Very ambiguous trailer
Release date: July 17th
Buffalo 8’s Atrabilious
Cast: Whoopi Goldberg, Jeffrey Wright, and Alec Baldwin
Release: July 18th
Mubi’s Die, My Love (their $24M Cannes acquisition)
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson
Release: November 7th (e.g. Oscar Campaign)
Max’s The Pitt (Season 2)
Release: Jan 2026
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping may have just announced some of their best casting yet. Eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close and Tony-winning actor Billy Porter have been cast as Drusilla Sickle and Magno Stift, respectively, in the upcoming prequel.
Drusilla is a cruel and entitled escort for the District 12 tributes, akin to the dastardly villain Cruella De Vil, whom Close brilliantly portrayed in the live-action 101 Dalmatians (1996, scene).
Magno is her estranged husband and the Tributes' often-drunk and uninspired designer.
The sixth film in the franchise will hit theaters Nov. 20th, 2026.
Tidbits:
Annie Mumolo (Bridesmaids) has joined the Steve Carell-led untitled campus-set comedy from Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses as a recurring cast member. The series explores a complicated father-daughter relationship. Produced by Warner Bros. Television.
Cathy Moriarty is a staple of cinema. She played De Niro’s wife in Raging Bull, whose own rage rivaled his violence (clip). Plus, she was gloriously cynical in Patti Cake$ (clip). She joins the cast of The Very Best People starring Paul Walter Hauser.
Linda Hamilton (Terminator) + Aliens. That’s pretty much what you’re in for with Vertical’s Osiris. Come for the gore, stay for Hamilton’s accent (trailer).
Teyana Taylor (watch her in A Thousand and One, and your heart will shatter) will co-star in Sony and Netflix’s Kevin Hart film 72 Hours. Zach Cherry (Severance) also joins the cast. The story follows a 40-year-old executive (Hart) who mistakenly ends up at a bachelor party with twenty-somethings.
Carla Gugino (Spy Kids) joins Brad Pitt in David Fincher’s The Continuing Adventures of Cliff Booth, set to film this July for Netflix.
Theo Rossi (monstrous in his self-serving empathy in Max’s The Penguin) joins A Better Place from Virgo films, which premiered their first feature, Idiotka, at SXSW. The film follows “a disgraced deputy, his anxious partner, and a sharp-tongued female prisoner who cover up a hit-and-run.”
David Hekili Kenui Bell, a Hawaiian actor in Disney’s upcoming Lilo & Stitch remake, has died. Bell also appeared in Hawaii Five-0, Magnum P.I., and Amazon’s The Wrecking Crew.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
K-POPS!, which premiered at TIFF and played at Tribeca, has just been acquired by Aura Entertainment (CEO: Marc Goldberg, producer: Riff Raff).
K-POPS! from Actor/Director/Writer/Producer: Anderson .Paak (debut) follows a washed-up musician who jumps at the chance to capitalize on his long-lost son's stardom.
The film is an ode to mid-2000s campy comedies with fast-paced fun, vibrant colors, obviously great music, and just the right amount of endearing familial love. K-POPS! is a love letter to many different cultures, a heartwarming and wholesome debut from Paak.
Release date January 2026.
Tidbit:
Documentarian Brian Tetsuro Ivie (Emanuel) makes his narrative directorial debut with Anima, a road-trip sci-fi drama starring Sydney Chandler (Alien: Earth) and Takehiro Hira (Shōgun). Ivie, co-founder of celluloid-only studio Kebrado, previously produced Wildcat and Concessions. Anima will also follow that path of being shot purely on celluloid, with Ivie promising a blend of emotional intimacy and speculative science fiction.
Vantage Media (Popeye The Slayer Man) hires Kellie Mutch as President of North American Distribution. She was previously the VP of partner management at Gravitas Ventures and the director of Digital customer marketing for Disney.
Vertical has acquired U.S. rights to Ice Road: Vengeance, the Liam Neeson-led sequel to The Ice Road. Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, the action thriller follows Neeson’s ice road driver battling mercenaries in Nepal. The original had some crazy set pieces -trailer. Releasing in theaters June 27.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Warner Bros. Pictures films are getting the Bollywood treatment. The studio inks a five-film deal with Bhanushali Studios Limited (BSL) and JOAT Films for Indian adaptations. The new partnership aims to reimagine classic WB titles through an Indian cultural lens, with the mega studio set to handle all distribution of these remakes. Development on the first film in this deal is already underway.
Tubi UK just struck a major deal with NBCUniversal, AMC, and Sony. The Fox-owned streamer’s library is growing with 1,000 films and TV episodes added, doubling its content number from the UK’s launch just last summer. Films like Baby Driver (2017) and Sony’s The Da Vinci Code (2006) are some of the many new titles on Tubi UK.
Amazon MGM has set a theatrical release for the intense crime drama Nishaanchi from Indian auteur Anurag Kashyap (Kennedy). The story delves into the complex lives of two brothers who walk starkly different paths, exploring how their choices shape their destinies. Nishannchi is one of the first Indian films from the studio to get a theatrical release, playing across the US and India beginning on Sept. 19th.
Mini Tidbit:
A detective duo for the ages. Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence has been greenlit by BritBox for a six-part adaptation. British playwright Phoebe Eclair-Powell will pen the series produced by BBC Studios in association with Agatha Christie Limited.
The head of Pact, John McVay, is exiting after 25 years with the trade body representing UK producers. McVay always empowered indie producers and will remain CEO through the end of the year.
ON THIS DAY
1936. Ken Loach born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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