Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
A Paper Tiger, Bruckheimer’s Odyssey, and a Suspect.
Let’s go!
The Cannes Film Festival has announced 16 more films. Here’s the breakdown:
Paper Tiger
Dir/Wri: James Gray
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller, and Adam Driver
In Competition (2nd American film)
Prod Co: RT Features (Ad Astra, The Lighthouse)
Synopsis:
Two brothers pursue the American Dream but get entangled in a dangerous Russian mafia scheme that terrorizes their family, testing their bond as betrayal becomes possible.
Neon just picked up this film, making it their 7th at the Festival.
Victorian Psycho
Cast: Maika Monroe, Jason Isaacs
Dir: Zachary Wigon (Sanctuary, starring Qualley)
Prod: Dan Kagan (Longlegs)
Financier/International Sales Rep: Anton
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Synopsis:
In 1858, psychopathic governess Winifred Notty (Qualley) arrives at isolated Ensor House to teach the children. As employees mysteriously vanish, the owners grow suspicious of her true motives hidden beneath her disturbing nature.
Releasing Sept 15th.
Tidbits:
Judith Godrèche (the actress who leaves Kyle and marries Mike in The Climb) directs A Girl’s Story (Mémoire de fille) about a woman who travels back in time to her first night with a man. Playing in Un Certain Regard.
Best Sci-fi synopsis from Titanic Ocean, playing in Un Certain Regard: In the scintillating teenage universe of a special boarding school that trains teenage girls into professional mermaids, 17-year-old Akame will find her siren voice, discover first love, and experience a metamorphosis.
Un Certain Regard closing film is Ulysse by Laetitia Masson (French director who recently helped adapt Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague).
For more:
Full list of new films here.
Or check out our full Cannes Breakdown, including the new films, one starring Gael García Bernal returning to sci-fi. Plus, Prime sneaks in a film. Here.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Benedict Cumberbatch stars & produces A24 UK Vatican heist series White Smoke.
Jerry Bruckheimer adapts viral album musical Epic into animated Odyssey feature.
HBO lands Sundance dramedy Miss You, Love You starring Allison Janney.
Naomi Watts stars as ballerina Margot Fonteyn in romantic drama Margot & Rudi.
Justin Long & Rob Perlman join zombie comedy Hellhound w/ Sam Rockwell.
Connor Storie eyes Melissa McCarthy thriller Turpentine from Craig Zobel.
Parker Posey hosts mob-themed reality competition series.
Ralph Fiennes & Viggo Mortensen lead Cannes market title Embers.
Bleecker Street’s thriller When Darkness Loves Us picks up sales rep Cornerstone.
Nellie Reed signs overall TV deal with A24.
Magnolia acquires U.S. rights to SXSW Midnighter winner Never After Dark.
Alex Morsanutto wraps debut feature Dark Skulls.
Kevin McKidd leads ITV thriller series The Only Suspect.
Yesterday’s correct answer: A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, A24’s 1st film.
18% got it right.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Trading spells for smoke signals. Benedict Cumberbatch is set to star in and produce A24 UK’s series adaptation of White Smoke, the upcoming heist novel from Nick Brucker. Set during a papal conclave, the story follows a group of duplicitous thieves plotting to steal the Vatican’s most priceless treasures.
Cumberbatch seems made for this role. He’s not in Conclave, but his ultra-cerebral nature in Sherlock seems like he could be the brains of any operation.
White Smoke will be publishing in 2027, but A24 and Cumberbatch + his production banner, SunnyMarch (We Live in Time), won the rights.
The Odyssey… animated. Jerry Bruckheimer is making an animated musical film of Homer’s The Odyssey. Created by Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Jorge Rivera-Herrans, Epic is a nine-part series of album musicals that follows Odysseus’ journey to Ithaca.
Beginning as a senior thesis at the University of Notre Dame, Epic gained a massive following when Rivera-Herrans started uploading his creative endeavors on TikTok. Now, the series has a whopping 4bn total global streams as of April 2026.
With Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey hitting theaters in July, it seems like Homer from 2,000 years ago is the hottest writer in Hollywood right now. We don’t know what the film is going to look like as of now, but we can definitely expect a sung-through musical with grand orchestral strings, quite similar to Les Misérables (2012), where they used songs instead of traditional dialogue to tell the story.
Tidbit:
Not long after its secret screening at Sundance, Miss You, Love You has found its home at HBO. Starring a wonderfully entertaining pair in Oscar-winner Allison Janney and Girls’ Andrew Rannells, the film follows a grieving widow who is forced to plan her husband’s funeral not with her son, but with his personal assistant. Written and directed by Community actor Jim Rash, it is a story about unexpected bonds, the importance of laughter, and healing alongside a stranger set to debut as an HBO Original on May 29th.
Trailers:
Ketchup Entertainment’s Coyote vs. ACME
Prod: James Gunn
Release: Aug 28
Warner Bros.’ Clayface
Wri: Mike Flanagan
Dir: James Watkins (Speak No Evil)
Cast: Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie
Budget: $40M
Release: Oct 23
Universal Pictures’ Disclosure Day
Trailer now w/ aliens!
Release: June 12
IFC’s Saccharine
Release: May 22
Netflix’s Mexico 86
Cast: Diego Luna
Release: June 5
AMC+’s The Vampire Lestat
Cast: Sam Reid
Release: June 7
Neon’s Leviticus
Release: June 19
First Look:
Netflix’s Kylie doc series
Cast: Kylie Minogue
Release TBD
Release Dates:
Universal Pictures’ Miami Vice ‘85
Dir: Joseph Kosinski
Confirmed Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Austin Butler
Release: August 6, 2027
Focus Features’ The Uprising
Dir: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell
Prod Co: Blumhouse Productions
Release: September 11, 2027
Paramount’s Heart Eyes 2
Dir: Josh Ruben
Release: Feb. 11, 2028
California Schemin’
Dir: James McAvoy
Release: Oct 2
Netflix’s Heartstopper Forever
Cast: Kit Connor, Joe Locke
Send-off movie for Netflix series Heartstopper
Release: Jul 17
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
FX’s Love Story’s Naomi Watts is reinventing herself while returning to her roots. Watts is set to star as legendary prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn in Margot & Rudi.
From director Anthony Fabian (Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris), the romantic drama marks a full circle moment for the Mulholland Drive (2001) star, who spent many years training in dance before turning to acting.
Fonteyn had a long career as the face of The Royal Ballet, with the 60s-set film exploring the explosive chemistry, on and off stage, between her and Rudolf Nureyev, her much younger dance partner for over two decades.
From surviving a massive tsunami in The Impossible (2012) to being swung around by CGI in King Kong (2005), Watts is no stranger to kinetic roles, but taking on one of ballet’s most iconic figures demands a delicate physicality that is a great challenge.
She stars alongside Richard E. Grant and Ukrainian ballet dancer Alexandr Trush as Nureyev. The film is in pre-production.
Tidbit:
Let’s all go to hell! Justin Long and Rob Perlman are cast in Hellhound. The film already stars Marisa Tomei and Sam Rockwell from producer Joseph Restaino (Pig). Synopsis: A small-town vet joins forces with his ex-wife and her cop boyfriend to stop the President from destroying NYC during a zombie outbreak. Shooting later this summer in NY.
Heated Rivalry’s Connor Storie is teaming with a legend. Storie is in talks to join Melissa McCarthy in Turpentine, a thriller feature from The Penguin director Craig Zobel, where he is expected to play a deadbeat son who steals from his parents to pay off a debt to a looming bookie. The casting has not yet been confirmed, but it seems like the perfect project to not only show off his range but also an opportunity for him to build on his momentum.
Parker Posey is saying bye to the White Lotus and hello to reality TV. Posey will host The Mob, a Traitors-style competition show that drops celebrities into a mob-inspired power game where an all-powerful “Don” determines who gets “whacked”.
Casting Tidbits:
Titus Welliver
Desmond Harrington
Vas Saranga
All these casting tidbits and more here.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
Cannes Market adds:
Embers
Int. Sales Rep: Embankment Films (The Father)
Dir: István Szabó (Mephisto)
Wri: Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons)
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Viggo Mortensen
Prod. Comp: Bell Media (Heated Rivalry)
Synopsis:
Henrik and Konrad were inseparable friends once. They reconnect decades after Konrad’s mysterious disappearance, uncovering the secret that tore them apart and the woman at the center of it.
Cornerstone (Pillion) boards as international sales rep for:
When Darkness Loves Us
Dir: James Ashcroft (The Rule of Jenny Pen)
Cast: Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones), Marlon Williams (Sweet Tooth)
U.S. Dist: Bleecker Street Media
Synopsis:
When a pregnant young woman becomes trapped in an underground cave system, she must learn to survive in a world totally devoid of light. But she discovers true darkness within herself when she emerges 15 years later.
Mini Tidbits:
Payal Kapadia, now president of Cannes Critics Week
Studio TF1
Camille Delamarre’s The Godforsaken Sea
All those tidbits and more here.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Nellie Reed signs an overall TV deal with A24. This is through Reed’s new prod co Short Stack Productions.
A24 is getting way more involved in TV recently, from their collab with Apple, Margo’s Got Money Troubles, to their first unscripted series with HBO, Neighbors.
Reed’s work history gives an idea of what might be next:
Story Syndicate, Head of TV (2023-2026)
Court limited series w/ Jack Thorne (creator: Adolescence)
Color Force, SVP (2016 - 2023)
FX’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
Free Association (Channing Tatum’s company), VP of TV (2014-2016)
Comrade Detective (2017)
Reed seems to like making prestige projects adjacent to the true crime space. We’ll see if she branches out or doubles down for A24.
Magnolia Pictures acquires the U.S. rights to Dave Boyle’s Japanese horror film Never After Dark.
The film follows a Japanese traveling psychic who battles a powerful entity at a remote house. It gained critical buzz and won the SXSW Audience Award in the Midnighter section, and is a thrilling ride that nods to Japanese and South Korean horror films like Ringu (1998) and A Tale of Two Sisters (2003).
It stars Moeka Hoshi (Shōgun), Kento Kaku (House of Ninjas), and Mutsuo Yoshioka (Chime) in an all-Japanese cast.
Magnolia Pictures is planning a fall theatrical release.
Tidbit:
Alex Morsanutto has just wrapped his debut feature, Dark Skulls. I recently got to see some first-look photos, and there’s a rawness to the imagery that conjures up memories of watching The Revenant or reading Blood Meridian. Morsanutto first AD’d the Oscar-nominated A Lien (2024) and produced SXSW Best Short Trapped and Scent of Pho.
Mini Tidbits:
The Illinois film/TV commission will add 5% to their tax credit if you are a “certified green production.” The current incentive is 35% for qualified IL spending.
The Isolate Thief, starring Joe Pantoliano and Sean Bean, gets picked up by Radial Entertainment as the worldwide sales rep. The film is a period western from director John Suits (3022) and prod co Hideout Pictures (Old Henry).
ITV casts former Grey’s Anatomy actor Kevin McKidd to headline The Only Suspect, a thriller series produced by Fremantle’s Red Planet Pictures (BBC’s Beyond Paradise). McKidd will play Alex, a man whose troubled youth, defined by reckless decisions and buried secrets, comes back to haunt him thirty years later.
ON THIS DAY
1990. Dev Patel born in London, England.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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