Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Netflix’s Lord, Disney’s Darling, and a ham sandwich.
Let’s go!
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I sat down with Jack Thorne, the Emmy-winning creator and writer of HBO’s His Dark Materials and Netflix’s Adolescence, to discuss his latest show, Netflix’s Lord of the Flies.
This has been a passion project of Thorne’s for many years, and although there’s obvious crossover in the subject matter to Adolescence, he actually conceived of and wrote Lord of the Flies well beforehand*.
Thorne shared what compelled him to adapt author William Golding’s dystopian vision of British boys whose flight crash-lands on an island, forcing them to form their own society, where law and order become undone:
“[Golding’s] not talking about what we are at our essence. He’s not talking about inner evil or any of that. He’s talking about boys playing at being grown-ups. And the grown-ups that they play at are the grown-ups that they’ve seen, that they’ve witnessed, that they’ve been… They are war babies”
At the beginning of the series, when the boys first find themselves on the island, they are infatuated with talking about their fathers and how their fathers will save them. But once this wish fulfillment falls apart, the group fractures, and something darker emerges.
Thorne stated:
“We define ourselves more by what we’re not than what we are. And I think that’s the age that Golding was writing about, obviously, a much more extreme time. But I do think this book has so much relevance for now.”
And that’s what makes Thorne’s vision so powerful: his children inherit the adult world’s rituals of fear, hierarchy, and violence, and mistake it for civilization.
For More:
Trailer + full interview with Jack Thorne. For anyone who wants to adapt a novel, it’s a masterclass.
*Lord of the Flies was shot first, but it was released later because Adolescence had very little post-production due to the long-takes.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Disney’s Q2 gains, Warner Bros. Q1 losses.
Matt Shakman will direct a new Planet of the Apes installment for 20th Century.
James Marsden stars in Apple TV thriller Disavowed as a respected CIA officer.
Ted Turner, CNN founder and cable TV pioneer, died at 87.
Amazon MGM secures TV rights to Liz Tomforde’s sports-romance series.
PBS Kids reboots Clifford the Big Red Dog.
WME shuts down its international sales operation.
Scarlett Johansson will star in Ari Aster’s new A24 film Scapegoat.
Brendan Fraser returns to sci-fi with Anton’s Mars survival thriller Starman.
Oscar Isaac will lead Netflix’s Vegas casino drama EP’d by Scorsese.
Adrien Brody and Rachel Zegler board AIDS-crisis drama Last Dance.
Mubi takes international territories on Lukas Dhont’s Cannes title Coward.
Doug Liman, Joe Swanberg & Scott Adkins have new packages for Cannes Market.
Utopia’s Circle Collective picks up NA rights to Tribeca’s Honeyjoon.
Mubi acquires worldwide rights to Sundance doc winner Nuisance Bear.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
We’re revisiting the Planet of the Apes. Matt Shakman (Fantastic Four: First Steps) is directing the newest installment of the Planet of the Apes franchise for 20th Century. The film will not be a continuation of the most recent Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), but a new story that Shakman and writer Josh Friedman (Wri: The Fantastic Four: First Steps) are conceiving.
Shakman did a fantastic job of bringing the retro-future of Fantastic Four to life. And much of the power of the Apes series relies on its wonderful conflation of various technological periods, times, and places. So he’s a great fit.
Want more Apes? Check out our deep dive on why the series still resonates:
https://theindustry.co/p/planet-of-the-apes-black-mirror
WME is discontinuing its international sales operation, with longtime co-head Alex Walton exiting the company. Announced on the eve of the Cannes market, Walton will be creating his own sales venture, expected to take a number of WME Independent executives with him. The sales label will not be participating in any international dealmaking at Cannes, given the company’s new focus on securing sales for its upcoming domestic slate.
Ted Turner, CNN founder, media mogul, and one of the kings of broadcasting, has died at 87. Beyond creating the first 24-hour news channel and a slew of other cable networks, TBS, TNT, and TCM, to name a few, Turner was also a prolific environmentalist and an incredibly influential figure in the Atlanta sports scene. Turner revolutionized American cable television.
New and old IP:
Amazon’s Windy City
Clifford reboot
HBO’s Us
Get the scoop on this trio here.
Mini Tidbit:
Vice News is getting resuscitated into a social-platform-first outlet.
Renewals:
Max’s Harry Potter series (for S2)
Title: Chamber of Secrets
Filming: Fall
Cancellations:
Hulu’s Foster Dade (pilot)
Prod Co: Warner Bros. TV
Reboot:
Fox’s Highway to Heaven reboot
Wri: Jason Katims (Parenthood)
Release: 2027 ~ 2028
Trailer:
Prime Video’s Legally Blonde prequel, Elle
Cast: Lexi Minetree
Release: July 1
Hulu’s Deli Boys S2
Release: May 28
Magnolia Pictures’ Maddie’s Secret
Dir: John Early
Release: June 19
Clips:
Latvian Basketball Drama Ulya
Austrian Drama Everytime
Release: TBD
Release Dates:
Hulu’s The Bear S5
Release: June 25
Prime Video’s System
Release: May 22
Indian thriller Bharat Bhhagya Viddhaata
India Release: June 12
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Scarlett Johansson will star in Ari Aster’s new A24 film Scapegoat. Aster will write, direct, and produce the film, and Johansson was said to be Aster’s first choice for his new project.
Johansson has no problem doing horror. In fact, in the same way she can turn on her charisma, she can drain it. Just watch Under the Skin (2013), she plays an emotionless predatory alien that is unnerving to say the least.
We don’t know what Scapegoat will be about, but maybe she could be a mother-driven type character that Ari Aster excels at writing – imagine a Toni Collette type in Hereditary (2018). But we hope it’ll be closer to Joaquin Phoenix’s Beau is Afraid character, someone who has been punished for leaving the nest, and it has distorted his very reality into a hellscape.
Misery has long suited Charlotte Gainsbourg on screen, but in her new film, Oh, How Fun!, the actress sends herself somewhere far brighter.
Joined by Édgar Ramírez (Emilia Pérez), the Greek-island set satirical comedy follows a privileged friend group whose holiday spirals into chaos when a tradition of pranks goes too far.
The film marks a pretty sharp pivot for Gainsbourg, who earned international acclaim and Cannes Best Actress for playing a grieving mother descending into sadistic madness in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), a performance that launched a career of dark genre films and psychologically heavy roles.
Oh, How Fun! will be presented to buyers at the Cannes Film Market.
Tidbits:
From George of the Jungle to Up in Space, Oscar-winning Brendan Fraser is set to headline sci-fi thriller, Starman. Completely different from John Carpenter’s Starman (1984), Fraser will play a visionary technologist who faces unforeseen events after the launch of his historic expedition to Mars, now faced with a new mission: survival. While Fraser is involved in a number of upcoming titles, Starman marks his return to the sci-fi genre nearly two decades after Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008). Anton (Fuze) will launch sales at Cannes.
Oscar Isaac is going back to Vegas. He will star in Netflix’s untitled Vegas casino series, EP’d by Scorsese and created by Ocean’s Thirteen writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien. The eight-episode drama will focus on the president of the hottest hotel/casino on the Strip, whose back-door negotiations and high-stakes power plays reflect the city’s dangerous glamor. We loved Isaac in Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter. Isaac wasn’t just a gambling addict, but an addict of retribution and pain. The shell of this new show is very different, but the dormant depravity feels similar.
Brody, in his first post-Oscar role, will star in Last Dance about a queer father who takes his daughter (Rachel Zegler) on a gay cruise in the midst of the AIDS crisis. There’s something very romantic and very messed up about this in a way that could, under Brody’s baggy eyes and heavy soul, turn out to be beautiful. FilmNation is bringing this to the Cannes Market.
Casting tidbits:
Lee Byung-hun (No Other Choice)
Disney’s Hocus Pocus 3 cast
Matthew Lillard
Apple TV’s Disavowed
All those casting tidbits and more here.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
The first big buy of Cannes. Mubi has picked up distribution rights in the UK, Ireland, Germany, LATAM, and six other countries for Coward.
The Official Selection is from the director of A24’s Close (2023, trailer), Lukas Dhont.
Synopsis:
A Belgian soldier struggles with cowardice and heroism in WWI trenches.
Close was a study of how young friendship can dissolve with the social pressures of a wicked world. It was delicate, and then it was crippling. And it actually won the Grand Prix when it played at Cannes in 2022.
From the first look at the image above, we can see he’s taking on similar themes about manhood and connection.
No US distributor as of yet.
Cannes Market:
New projects from director Doug Liman and Joe Swanberg, producer Ridley Scott, with cast like Miles Teller, Eddie Redmayne, Dakota Fanning, Orlando Bloom, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas.
Mini Tidbits:
The Devils
Dark Ocean
Bolivia’s iconic salt flat
More on these weird and wonderful projects here.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Jennifer Kent (Dir: The Babadook) is making a sci-fi film adaptation of The Girl Who Was Plugged In, starring Sophie Thatcher (Companion).
Based on the novella of the same name, the film will follow a disfigured and suicidal young woman recruited by a tech company to remotely operate a perfect body named Delphi.
Kent is amazing at creating uncomfortable atmospheres, whether it be a house haunted by a demonic spirit in The Babadook (2014) or British colonial Tasmania in The Nightingale (2018). Her highly stylized world-building would be perfect for a dystopian future.
Launching at Cannes Market. Goodfellas (Nouvelle Vague) is the international sales rep. CAA and Range have the U.S. rights.
American Hostage, MGM+’s psychological thriller, will roll out internationally, along with other international streamers such as HBO Max.
Based on the successful scripted podcast of the same name, the show follows an Indianapolis reporter (Jon Hamm) when a desperate hostage-taker demands to be interviewed on his news program. Sony Pictures Television revealed that the show will roll out on MGM+’s international footprint in the UK, Germany, Italy.
HBO Max will oversee the distribution in France, Central and Eastern Europe.
Utopia’s Circle Collective picks up NA rights on Honeyjoon. The film premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Synopsis:
June and her Persian-British mom, Lela, travel to the romantic Azores for a grief anniversary, with contrasting ways of coping.
The trailer showcases an odd couple being a mother-daughter who don’t quite fit in their surroundings. Playing June 10th at IFC.
Mini Tidbit:
Mubi picks up worldwide rights to Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize Doc winner Nuisance Bear. This is interesting because A24 served as the production company. There’s nothing really offbeat about this film, other than it’s just very profound.
My deep dive after watching:
https://theindustry.co/p/nuisance-bear
ON THIS DAY
1997. The Fifth Element is released.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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