Owen Wilson’s Roll
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Owen Wilson’s renaissance. Anne Hathaway’s FBI. And some old pickles.
Let’s go!
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Owen Wilson is a cultural phenomenon.
Although the height of his stardom was realized in the early 2000s with Zoolander (2001), Starsky and Hutch (2004), and Wedding Crashers (2005), he’s overdue for a renaissance.
He is set to star in Rolling Loud, a comedy set at Miami’s Rolling Loud hip-hop festival.
Here’s the synopsis:
A father (Wilson) makes a bad parenting choice by taking his 13-year-old son to a wild hip-hop festival, leading to chaos as they navigate crowds, security, and family dynamics with eccentric companions like his reckless co-worker (comedian Matt Rife).
Wilson’s roles are typified by characters making bad decisions, but his career was kicked off by making a very good one.
A chance meeting with Wes Anderson in 1988 in the halls of the University of Texas ignited an 8-film partnership.
Anderson said of Wilson:
“He’s deceptively intelligent and sometimes even hides his intelligence and how well-read he is. He surprises you in the course of getting to know him. People might underestimate him sometimes… people are drawn to him. If kids were picking teams, he might be good at whatever the sport is...”
Wilson’s range is often overlooked in part due to his cookie-cutter roles in the early 2000s, where he played (excellently) various copies of the charmingly uncertain and starry-eyed.
It’s this child-like quality that led to the memefication of his catchphrase:
“Wow”
And allowed him to work with auteurs like Wes Anderson, Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris), and Paul Thomas Anderson (Inherent Vice), where he slips into absurd worlds with ease.
Rolling Loud is written and directed by Jeremy Garelick (Murder Mystery 2).
For More:
Which side is Owen Wilson on? Watch him square off with Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice. Scene.
Owen Wilson tries to explain his time-travel predicament to a table of surrealists, including Adrien Brody as Dalí. Scene.
Every Owen Wilson “Wow” in chronological order.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Anne Hathaway and Dave Bautista are starring opposite one another in an untitled action comedy from writer/director Jonathan Tropper (writer: This is Where I Leave You).
Deadpool 3 team Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, and director Shawn Levy are reuniting for a new film, Boy Band. The film will tell the story of former boy band members reuniting as middle-aged men, with Reynolds and Jackman set to star and Levy to direct.
The Gallerist, starring Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega, just got financed by MRC (Saltburn, American Fiction).
Glen Powell is out to studios with a new pitch for Homewreckers, an AI Erotic thriller.
Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006) is getting a four-episode reboot. Frankie Muniz, Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek, will all be reprising their roles.
NBC will air the first episode of Eddie Redmayne-led The Day of the Jackal on their main channel later this month to try and entice fans to finish the series on Peacock.
Haley Atwell will be reprising her Marvel role of Agent Carter in Avengers Doomsday.
Sony’s reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer is set to premiere next summer, with 90s icons Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Freddie Prinz Jr. reprising their roles
Dane Cook and Hana Mae Lee (Pitch Perfect) star in Boris Is Dead, a dark comedy thriller.
Jon Shear (MFA professor: NYU and Columbia) leads the Take Action Workshop for directors and actors.
The screenplays for Wicked, Heretic, The Piano Lesson, and Memoir of a Snail are here.
Full breakdown of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival program lineup here.
Netflix and Roku have secured U.S. rights to WHAM!: Last Christmas Unwrapped, a documentary about George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s iconic ’80s duo.
Brady Corbet (Dir: The Brutalist) next film is a 1970s/80s immigration story that draws on horror and westerns.
The writers behind Italian crime series Gomorrah (2014-2021) are working on a new mystery show exploring the string of murders perpetrated by Italy’s White Uno Gang.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Who doesn’t love an undercover comedy? Anne Hathaway and Dave Bautista are starring opposite one another in an untitled action comedy from writer/director Jonathan Tropper (writer: This is Where I Leave You) for Amazon MGM & AGBO.
Synopsis:
Two polar opposite FBI agents with radically different styles being forced to pretend to live together undercover. Initially hostile towards each other, they gradually develop mutual respect while closing the case. By the end they learn to respect each other as the case winds to a close.
The movie, described as a mismatched partner story, is inspired by an actual sting in which agents posed as a couple to infiltrate global criminal enterprises. It culminated in a staged wedding in New Jersey. When the crime bosses checked in for their table assignments, they were arrested and dragged away so as not to tip off the next suspect.
Hathaway, who’s been undercover before in both silly spy comedy Get Smart (2008) and Ocean’s 8 (2018) female-driven heist comedy, has also just been announced to be joining Christopher Nolan’s next summer epic. Bautista also recently played a CIA operative in his film My Spy (2020).
The FBI sting operation comedy feature is currently in pre-production.
Deadpool Bromance lives on: It was kind of inevitable when Ryan Reynolds and D3 director Shawn Levy finally got Hugh Jackman to reprise Wolverine, the trio would find something else to work on together. Reynolds recently hinted that the project would be called Boy Band. The script's first draft was written by Jesse Andrews (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), and Reynolds took a pass on a second draft. The film will tell the story of former boy band members reuniting as middle-aged men, with Reynolds and Jackman set to star and Levy to direct. Reynolds obviously has an affinity for boy bands, bringing it into one of the most creative title sequences ever.
Boy Band is currently being written and will be produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures.
The Gallerist, starring Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega, just got financed by MRC (Saltburn, American Fiction). Here’s the anemic logline:
A desperate gallerist who conspires to sell a dead guy at Art Basel Miami.
This hails from director Cathy Yan (dir: Birds of Prey).
New cast have boarded:
Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)
Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction)
Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago)
Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover)
Daniel Brühl (Inglourious Basterds)
That’s all we know, but aesthetically, this macabre premise tracks well for the lead, Ortega, who has made a name for herself, connecting with roles that are sutured to the netherworld (Wednesday, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice). Portman thrives on psychological dramas like Black Swan (2010, her highest-grossing non-superhero film with $329 M) and the recent May, December (2023).
We’ll keep you updated when this coalesces.
MRC is also producing Emerald Fennell's (Dir: Saltburn) next film, Wuthering Heights (cast: Margot Robbie & Jacob Elordi). The release date on that is Feb 13th, 2026.
Glen Powell is a homewrecker. Ok, not really, but he’s pitching the project Homewreckers, an AI Erotic Thriller to all the studios in town:
Legendary
Lionsgate
New Regency
Sony
Warner Bros.
Tone is said to blend “steamy thriller” with “modern anxieties,” e.g.:
Adrian Lyne (Dir: Fatal Attraction)
Alex Garland (Ex Machina)
Neil M. Paik will adapt from his unpublished short story. AI films are hot these days, as we know from the other week’s massive $3 M sale of an AI spec script and Open AI’s Sora dropping last week.
Tidbit:
The Wilkerson family is all under one roof again and back on our TV screens too!
Malcolm in the Middle (2000-2006) is getting a four-episode reboot coming to Disney+ 25 years since it first premiered. Frankie Muniz as the titular overlooked middle son, Malcolm, and both of his parents, played by Bryan Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek, will all be reprising their roles as the dysfunctional family from the widely popular Fox sitcom. The new episodes will see Malcom and his daughter getting drawn into the family’s chaos when Hal and Lois demand his presence for their 40th wedding anniversary party. Series creator Linwood Boomer will return as writer and executive producer for the new episodes. The 20th Television reboot has not yet announced a drop date, but all episodes of the relatable, heartfelt, while still chaotic original Malcolm in the Middle series can be watched on Hulu and Hulu with Disney+.
A day with the Jackal: NBC will air the first episode of Eddie Redmayne-led The Day of the Jackal on their main channel later this month to try and entice fans to finish the series on Peacock. The first series finished Nov 11th, and it had mostly positive reviews, some speaking to a noticeable uptick in quality compared to other Peacock fare. NBC has not released numbers, but with Peacock lagging behind other streamers and Jackal’s reporting a $100 M budget, it would be fair to assume they had not hit the mark when it comes to viewership. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of these enticement teaser episodes on traditional cable trying to send people over to the various apps. If you want to take part in NBC's honey trap, you can catch the pilot for The Day of the Jackal on Dec 30th.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Oh Captain, My Captain: Haley Atwell will be reprising her Marvel role of Agent Carter in Avengers Doomsday. We don't yet know if that means she will be reprising her multi-verse variant from Doctor Strange 2 Captain Carter. In the same vein the recent reports of Chris Evans returning to play a variant of Captain America have been all but confirmed, with sources saying he will be credited as Nomad, the title Steve Rogers took when he was on the lam in between the films of Civil War and Infinity War (when he grew a beard). Timey-wimey multiverse stuff. Strap in, Marvel fans. There is gonna be a lot more of this until Doomsday arrives on May 1st, 2026.
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I Know What You’ll Be Doing Next Summer… Sony’s reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer is set to premiere next summer, with director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) and 90s icons Jennifer Love-Hewitt and Freddie Prinz Jr. reprising their roles with their original 1997 teen horror film both a critical and commercial success.
Actors Madelyn Cline (Outer Banks) and Camilla Mendes (Riverdale) are set to lead the new ensemble of the upcoming reboot.
Cline can most recently be seen in yet another mystery movie with a big cast, Rian Johnson’s sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022), but was the breakout star of Netflix’s Outer Banks. At the same time, Camilla Mendes was the star of her own long-running teen drama as Veronica Lodge in the CW’s Riverdale. Mendes, post-Riverdale, worked with Robinson in her teen thriller Do Revenge (2022).
Sony has announced the reboot’s official premiere date will be Jul. 18th 2025.
Tidbits:
UK action thriller Turbulence has just wrapped filming from director Claudio Fäh (Northmen: A Viking Saga) and screenwriter Andy Mason (wri. No Way Up). The cast is made up of Kelsey Grammer (Frasier), Olga Kurylenko (Oblivion), Jeremy Irvine (Treadstone), and Hera Hilmar (See) and follows a couple who takes a hot air balloon trip to rekindle their relationship, but things start to take a turn when another passenger joins them. Turbulence is now in post-production.
Dane Cook and Hana Mae Lee (Pitch Perfect) star in Boris Is Dead, a dark comedy thriller from director James Cullen Bressack (Darkness of Man). The film follows a waiter (Cook) entangled in a botched heist at a mob-linked restaurant. The film recently wrapped in Kansas City.
FESTIVALS AND RESOURCES
Jon Shear (MFA professor: NYU and Columbia) leads the Take Action Workshop for directors and actors.
Dan Futterman (writer: Capote, Foxcatcher) stated:
“You could make no better decision than to have Jon Shear as your teacher. I'm struck by what a rare opportunity it is to have a coach with such a rich and varied perspective on the filmmaking process. I did some of my best work as an actor while working with Jon.”
The workshop is a masterclass in exploring uniquely effective ways of communicating with actors on set to create powerful screen performances.
These workshops expand your abilities in:
Scene analysis
Testing material you’re writing
Working with top-tier actors
This is all done in a nurturing, creative environment.
Directors who have gone through the workshop have been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, Independent Spirit Awards, and Golden Globes; won Best Film awards at major festivals across the world; had commercial feature releases and Sundance premieres.
Jon Shear’s Take Action holiday season starts in LA this Thursday and then continues on Thursdays in January until 1/16:
https://www.jonshearcreative.com/workshops
His NYC season starts in late January.
Read Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox’s Wicked screenplay here:
https://theindustry.co/p/prospective-best-screenplay-academy
Also read Memoir of a Snail, The Piano Lesson, and Heretic, plus 20 more Oscar-hopeful scripts at the same link above.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT AND INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Wolfgang Becker has passed away at 70. The director is best known for the Golden Globe-nominated Good Bye Lenin (2003), which was a career rocketship for the lead Daniel Brühl (Inglorious Bastards).
Here’s the synopsis:
In 1990, to protect his fragile mother from a fatal shock after a long coma, a young man must keep her from learning that her beloved nation of East Germany as she knew it has disappeared.
There’s a light-hearted zaniness in watching Brühl run around Germany trying to find his mother a can of pickles that went out of circulation a decade ago (trailer).
Recently, Becker also directed Brühl in Me and Kaminski (2015). He will be missed.
Netflix and Roku have secured U.S. rights to WHAM!: Last Christmas Unwrapped, a documentary about George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s iconic ’80s duo. Directed by Nigel Cole, the film features exclusive footage of Michael performing “Last Christmas” at Wembley Arena, rare outtakes from the original music video, and interviews with stars like Mary J. Blige and Sam Smith discussing the song's themes. The documentary made its premiere last weekend on BBC 2.
Brady Corbet in profile for The New Yorker, shares a little about his next film after A24’s The Brutalist:
“Set in the nineteen-seventies and early eighties, will also deal with immigration, this time of the Chinese to California. Its style will be looser; genre-wise, it will draw on horror and Westerns.”
Read the full interview here.
Hair gel enthusiast and Paranormal investigator Zak Bagans, host of Ghost Adventures, has unveiled Scarehouse Films, his new production company backed by a multi-million-dollar investment. The studio plans to produce three independent horror films in 2025.
The writers behind Italian crime series Gomorrah (2014-2021), Leonardo Fasoli and Maddalena Ravagli, are working on a new untitled mystery show exploring the string of murders perpetrated by Italy’s White Uno Gang. The upcoming thriller series will be produced by Riccardo Tozzi (prod. Gomorrah) and Pietro Valsecchi (prod. Quo Vado) who said of the high-end show that it:
“Aims to unravel the mysteries and unresolved questions that still linger over this dark chapter in Italian history.”
The series is currently in the early stages of development.
ON THIS DAY
1962. Lawrence of Arabia is released in the United States
See you tomorrow!
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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