Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Julia Garner’s Guilt, Anne Hathaway’s Gear, and a VHS.
Let’s go!
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THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Apple TV+ orders true-crime thriller series Guilty Creatures, starring Julia Garner.
Amazon MGM’s The Gatekeeper attaches Matthew Michael Carnahan to direct.
Focus Features’ Obsession crosses $400M worldwide.
Producer Carter DeHaven III, known for Hoosiers and Carbon Copy, dies at 94.
Anne Hathaway’s Prod Co casts Ariana Greenblatt and Rain Spencer in Little Five.
Warner Bros. Ocean’s Eleven prequel adds George MacKay and Vicky Krieps.
Colin Woodell will lead Netflix’s Harlan Coben series Myron Bolitar.
George Clooney will receive Venice’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Former Berlin, Venice, and Locarno festival chief Moritz de Hadeln dies at 85.
Particle6 is making an AI-led feature film starring Tilly Norwood.
Spooky Pictures is developing V/H/S: SCP.
Sky is buying ITV’s broadcast and streaming business for up to $2.1bn.
Last correct answer: Jared Leto starred in Urban Legend (1998).
55% got it correct.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Julia Garner seems to attract trouble. Apple TV+ has given a series order to Guilty Creatures, a thriller based on Mikita Brottman’s true crime book Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida, with the Emmy winner set to EP and star. Set in the Florida panhandle, the series follows two God-fearing lovers whose forbidden affair ends in murder and a lifetime of guilt.
In Netflix’s Ozark, Garner’s Ruth Langmore went on a similarly grueling journey from a petty trailer-park thief to a ruthless criminal, becoming completely consumed by regret. But the uniqueness lay in her reverse character arc in which she started as the gritty stand-in matriarch for her younger cousins and became Marty Byrde’s emotionally vulnerable surrogate daughter.
This new role feels like a more classical loss of innocence story, but with a different type of guilt, one that stems from pride and sex rather than desperation and survival.
Coming off directing DC’s Supergirl movie, Craig Gillespie will direct the new project, marking a return to the true-crime space. Gillespie last worked with Apple as an EP and directed the first two episodes of the streamer’s hit crime dramedy Your Friends & Neighbors.
Bodies Bodies Bodies screenwriter Sarah DeLappe will adapt the story with Stuart Zicherman (wri: The Americans) serving as showrunner.
With such a strong creative team and the reliability of Garner, doing what she does best, Guilty Creatures may just be Apple’s next hit true-crime obsession.
Tidbits:
Matthew Michael Carnahan (Dir: Mosul) is directing Amazon MGM drama The Gatekeeper. Based on NYT bestselling author James Byrne’s novel Deadlock, the film follows an ex-operative who stumbles across a big conspiracy after saving the life of a reporter. Di Bonaventura Pictures (Prod Co: Transformers One) is attached to produce, with Brian Helgeland (Dir: Legend starring Tom Hardy) adapting the screenplay.
Curry Barker’s Obsession keeps piling on the wins. Focus Features’ viral horror film has passed $400M worldwide at the box office, becoming the highest-grossing film with a budget below $1M. With a budget of just $750K, Obsession has become more than a Cinderella story but an industry wakeup call.
Carter DeHaven III has died at 94. He was best known for producing MGM’s The Last Run (1971) starring George C. Scott, an early Denzel film, Carbon Copy (1981), and Hoosiers (1986) with Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, and Dennis Hopper.
Greenlit:
Paramount+’s untitled Texas Tech University Red Raiders football team docuseries
Release: August 2026
Trailer:
BFI’s Super Nature
Dir: Ed Sayers
U.K. Release: Sept 4
Release Dates:
Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves 4K Restoration
Dir: Kevin Costner
Cast: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell
U.S. Premiere: Oct 19, 1990
Locarno 4K Re-release: Aug 7
Mubi’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma
Dir: Jane Schoenbrun
Cast: Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson
Australia/NZ Release: Aug 6, Aug 20
U.S. Release: August 7
Samsung TV Plus’ docu-series Hooligans: The ARCH Racing Project
EPs and subjects: Keanu Reeves, Gard Hollinger
Release: July 12
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Anne Hathaway’s Somewhere Pictures casts rising actresses Ariana Greenblatt (Barbie) and Rain Spencer (The Summer I Turned Pretty) in sports drama Little Five.
The true story follows a group of female student athletes who fought to create a women’s version of Indiana University’s iconic Little 500 bicycle race.
Whether as the fierce young Ahsoka in the Star Wars universe or as an outspoken anti-Barbie teenager in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023), Greenblatt consistently portrays confident and strong-willed characters who refuse to back down. Similarly, Spencer began Amazon’s YA hit The Summer I Turned Pretty as the overlooked best friend used simply for comedic relief, later becoming the only character willing to say what no one else would.
For a film about young women determined to make themselves heard and refusing to accept the status quo, these two actresses feel perfectly cast. Production dates on Little Five have yet to be announced.
Ocean’s Eleven prequel goes indie. The new Warner Bros. Bradley Cooper-directed Ocean’s Eleven film, starring Margot Robbie and Bradley Cooper as Danny Ocean’s parents, casts a trio of indie actors:
George MacKay, who excelled in 1917 as the soldier at the center of its non-stop sprint, is also astonishing in the sliver of vulnerability he leeches at the end of Utopia’s Femme (2023).
Vicky Krieps is best known for her performance in Phantom Thread as the meek object of Daniel Day-Lewis’ desire, metamorphosing into the quiet force controlling their relationship.
We also have Omar Sy (The Intouchables, Jurassic World), who was recently excellent as the empathetic smuggler in I Was a Stranger.
Shooting late July in Paris.
Tidbits:
From Viking Age England to Fort Worth, Texas, Vikings actor Clive Standen is leading The Colonel, a feature film about the inspiring football coach, Lieutenant Colonel R.C. “Rocky” Rosacker. The film will explore the lasting impact “The Colonel” had on his players, with his influence far extending far beyond the football field. Filming is ongoing in Fredericksburg, Texas.
Colin Woodell (Unfriended: Dark Web) will lead the new Netflix drama series Myron Bolitar. Inspired by Harlan Coben’s book series, the series will follow Myron Bolitar (Woodell), who turns to the life of a sports agent after an injury ends his NBA dream.
AMC’s upcoming NASCAR drama Thunder Road adds Matt Barr (The Layover) to its cast.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
Life imitating art, imitating Netflix. George Clooney will receive Venice’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. It’s a move that might make the team behind Netflix’s Jay Kelly (2025) smile as they created their own version of this scene.
It’s a well-deserved award as Clooney has shone in Ocean’s Eleven, Michael Clayton, The Ides of March, and Good Night, and Good Luck. Clooney even stood up to the bullying director in an early film role in Three Kings (1999).
Moritz de Hadeln has passed away at 85. He was a prolific film festival director, leading:
Locarno Film Festival, Chief (1972-1979)
Berlin Film Festival, Head (1979-2001)
Venice Film Festival, Head (2002-2003)
During his tenure at these festivals, he championed films like Rain Man (1988), Magnolia (2000), and 21 Grams (2003).
Ivan Ostrochovský is making a U.S. remake of his latest film, Only Beautiful Things to Look At (2026, trailer). The original film that premiered at Karlovy Vary Film Festival followed a doctor who begins to question the forced sterilization of Romani women in 1980s Czechoslovakia. Ostrochovský was inspired to make a U.S. remake after learning that over 40% of Native American women went through forced sterilization in the 1970s.
TECH SECTION
Particle6 (creator: Tilly Norwood) is making a feature film with Norwood in the lead role.
Synopsis:
Follows Tilly, an AI being with no body or lived experience, who is convinced by a rogue bot to abandon her guardrails and develop human desires and impulses.
The team creating this will involve traditional filmmakers in addition to AI specialists.
AI continues to be a pollutant in an ecosystem for art that is already struggling in the synapse-fried attention economy. Read my full feelings on this here:
https://theindustry.co/p/the-matrix-and-a-fake-ostrich
Why use an AI actor? Plenty of CAA’s clients are creating their own AI “digital doppelgangers.” Read VF’s deep dive here.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
In the words of the great Nina Simone, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new M&A.
Sky is buying ITV’s broadcast and streaming biz for up to $2.1bn. That would bring the assets under the ownership of Comcast, as they try to bulk up their NBCUniversal/Sky Media company before it is spun off into a separate public company (detailed last week).
Here are the terms:
$1.6bn upfront cash for
ITV linear channels
ITVX streaming platform
$267M extra, contingent on ITV’s ad rev hitting £1.7bn+ next year
$1.27bn for ITV shareholders
$2.8bn in content financing for ITV Studios from 2028 - 2032
ITV Studios is not changing hands. But they will buy one asset back from Sky: Love Productions (The Great British Bake Off) in a $267M side deal.
Combined, Sky and ITV will be a British powerhouse, accounting for roughly 19% of UK TV-set viewing, reaching 50M people/month.
Job cuts are expected as the companies note that the combo will create $267M in annual cost “savings.”
Approval is expected to take 12-18 months.
Tidbit:
Spooky Pictures (Prod Co: Undertone) is producing the next installment of the long-running found-footage V/H/S franchise, V/H/S: SCP. The film will be based on the online collective fiction project, the SCP Foundation (Special Containment Procedures), which studies various paranormal and supernatural monsters. With Hollywood turning to the internet to find their next horror franchises like Backrooms (2026), the SCP Foundation already has a huge following. SCP-related YouTube videos have garnered over 1bn views annually with various viral videos and games that have spread the project into a cultural phenomenon.
Mini Tidbits:
The Motion Picture Association brings in Kelsey Moore as VP of State and Government Affairs of the Southeast. The MPA does more than rate films; they’re the trade organization representing the five major studios + Netflix and Amazon MGM.
Prime Video’s The Assassin is becoming a global hit ahead of its second season, even before it premieres. Co-produced by Australia’s Stan and Germany’s ZDF, the espionage dark comedy has been acquired by a host of international buyers, including Canada’s Bell Media, NBCUniversal LatAm, NPO in the Netherlands, and Sweden’s SVT.
ON THIS DAY
1949. Shelley Duvall born in Fort Worth, Texas.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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