Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
Paramount’s Delay, Ryan Gosling’s Ghost and Netflix’s Nuit.
Let’s go!
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The merger is delayed.
That is, Paramount has hit pause on its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery to let the lawsuit brought by the 12 state AGs proceed. Paramount’s new date to close the deal is June 1, 2027.
This is a big setback for Paramount, as whether this deal closes or not, it has just become more expensive for them.
If it closes:
Paramount will owe WBD $0.25/share every quarter ($650M/quarter) starting September 30, 2026
If it doesn’t close:
Paramount will owe WBD a $7bn fee
WBD can force Paramount to pay after June 4th, 2027
The leader, CA Attorney General Rob Bonta, stated:
“Great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy.”
Paramount said:
“Today’s agreement is a significant win because the result is exactly what we have sought from the outset: a direct path to a trial based on the evidence.”
We’re now living in a new timeline. One that feels like an echo of Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount, and likely one to get played out countless times in the future as the tectonic plates of the film industry shift between mergers, spinoffs and sales.
For More:
Read the full 12-state lawsuit here.
Here are the full details on Paramount’s plan for Warner Bros.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Ryan Gosling will play Ghost Rider in Shawn Levy’s 2028 Marvel film.
David Jonsson will star as T’Challa’s son in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther 3.
Charter’s pay-TV losses fall 74% year over year.
Netflix adapts Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s autobiographical novel Happy Old Year.
Sky Yang joins Siân Heder’s adaptation of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.
La La Land in Concert will headline Venice’s Cartier Cinema Club program.
Filmmaker Chuck Russell, director of The Mask and The Scorpion King, dies at 74.
Jacques Audiard reunites w/ Netflix for supernatural horror film La Nuit Ravagée.
Friday’s correct answer: 1950s, NBC adapted rainbow logo.
56% got it correct.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Two major casting announcements have come out of Comic-Con:
Ryan Gosling will play Ghost Rider.
Gosling is revving up the flames and riding into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After years of speculation, Gosling will officially play the fiery antihero in a standalone film, reuniting with director Shawn Levy shortly after they wrapped on Star Wars: Starfighter (2027).
Levy famously holds the title of having directed the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time with his Marvel debut Deadpool & Wolverine (2024). While its rating is unknown, the pair’s presumed good chemistry and Gosling’s excitement to trade in his Drive getaway car for a much hotter set of wheels could make for one hell of a movie, coming in 2028. Reveal video.
David Jonsson is the star of Black Panther 3.
Role: Chadwick Boseman’s character T’Challa’s son
Dir: Ryan Coogler
Release: Dec 2028
We could not be more excited for Jonsson. He was the highlight of the new Alien film, Alien: Romulus (2024), and was also astonishing in The Long Walk (2025). Reveal video.
Less major but still boatloads of fun: In Hulu’s Family Guy Halloween special, Kieran Culkin will voice the devil.
Charter, the leading U.S. pay-TV operator, sees losses slow in Q2 2026:
12.5M total video customers
↓21K subs since last quarter
On the positive side, Charter reduced its pay-TV losses by 74% year over year, after losing 80K subs in Q2 2025.
Charter Communications’ $34.5bn acquisition of Cox Communications, now the nation’s largest cable and broadband provider, will close by the end of August. The megamerger will take the Cox name and expand cable and internet services nationwide.
Tidbits:
Netflix is working with Brazilian novelist Marcelo Rubens Paiva, whose beautifully tragic childhood story was adapted in the Oscar-winning film I’m Still Here (2025, trailer). Paiva’s 1982 coming-of-age novel Happy Old Year is now being developed into a series by the streamer detailing the life-altering accident that left him tetraplegic by age 20. The news comes just months after Netflix’s newest office opened in Brazil.
Amazon MGM Studios has tapped former Netflix and HBO Max executive Pia Barlow as VP of Original Series Marketing, where she’ll oversee campaigns for the studio’s television slate. The hire, however, has already sparked some legal drama, with WBD now suing Amazon, alleging it unlawfully poached Barlow while she remained under contract.
Renewals:
AMC’s Interview with the Vampire (for S4)
Season name: Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned
Adult Swim’s President Curtis (for S2)
Rick and Morty spinoff
Cancellation:
Paramount+’s Crutch (after S1)
Star: Tracy Morgan
Trailers:
Prime’s Blade Runner 2099
Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Hunter Schafer
Release: Nov 25
Ok, another iconic Ridley Scott film made into a series. The world is so iconic that this feels like it may dilute the power of the original. But Yeoh looks tremendous in this, so we’ll give it a shot.
Apple’s Dark Matter (S2)
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly
Release: Aug 28
Apple’s Neuromancer
Cast: Callum Turner, Peter Sarsgaard
Release: Jan 22nd
Apple/Mattel/Skydance’s Matchbox: The Movie
Cast: John Cena and Jessica Biel
Release: Oct 9
Prime’s Carrie (series)
Showrunner: Mike Flanagan
Release: Oct 7
Prime’s Neagley (S1)
Reacher spin-off
Prime’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (S3)
Simon Pegg voices a Balrog
Release: Nov 11
HBO Max’s Lanterns
Cast: Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre
Release: Aug 16
Hulu’s Futurama (S14)
Release: Aug 3rd
Release dates:
New Line’s Gladys
Dir: Zach Cregger
Weapons prequel
Release: Sept 8, 2028
New Line’s The Flood
Dir: Zach Cregger
Prod: Steven Spielberg
Release: Nov 11, 2028
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Rooney and Kate Mara are the creepiest of twins in Bucking Fastard.
In the first look clip, we can see them speaking in perfect synchronization during a court case where they explain how they met Orlando Bloom’s character.
There’s a chipperness to the wild co-dependence that these two share, as if some sort of parasitic mind-meld.
The film is based on real-life twins Freda and Greta Chaplin, and you can see that the Maras have done a great job capturing them (Maras, Bucking Fastard trailer) vs. Chaplins clip.
We’ve seen Rooney go wonderfully unhinged in everything from Side Effects to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and Kate Mara’s role of Zoe Barnes in House of Cards becomes more effective as she goes off-kilter.
Director Herzog has brought out their unison in a remarkably haunting way. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival.
The star of Justin Lin’s Last Days, Sky Yang, has just been cast in Siân Heder (dir: CODA)’s new project, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. He will play Sam, a prodigy game designer who suffers from afflictions of the heart and body.
He’s ripe for the role.
In Last Days, he tells his father, a lifelong doctor, to return to his passion for painting as if radiating wisdom. But his character’s proclaimed self-enlightenment is deadly delusional. Watching him canoe full force into certain death is heartbreaking because it makes tangible how lost this kid really is.
Mini Tidbits:
Remember Backyard Baseball? Well, my high school friend Lindsay Barnett is adapting the old 90s game into an animation with voices from Tiffany Haddish and Arturo Castro. There will be 20x 11-minute episodes of Backyard Sports: The Animated Series. Play on!
Robin Givens (CW’s Batwoman) has joined the cast of Prime Video’s Cross for its upcoming third season. In the James Patterson drama series, Givens will star as the overbearingly conservative Senator Mulrooney who keeps her personal problems a closely guarded secret. Production for season three has begun in Toronto.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Filmmaker Chuck Russell has died at 74. Far from a household name, he directed two of my favorite childhood films. They couldn’t be more different:
The Mask (1994)
The Scorpion King (2002)
But both films do have something in common: they were the first real films of two superstars: Cameron Diaz and Dwayne Johnson.
Russell’s work in The Mask is of the highest caliber. There’s an electricity to every scene. And the sexual tension between Cameron Diaz and Jim Carrey is titillating.
And, of course, it’s Cameron Diaz’s first on-screen role. She is the electric yet sensitive love interest to Jim Carrey (iconic entrance scene). Diaz’s character, which could easily have fallen victim to overly simplified 90s typecasting, is surprisingly layered. And Carrey is in his finest form as a man who believes he’s a superhero and temporarily becomes one.
The Scorpion King was a bit of a childhood obsession of mine. I tried to prove to my parents that it wasn’t violent, only to show them this grisly death scene.
Rest in peace, Chuck.
Mini Tidbits:
Toronto-based New Mountain Films has scooped distribution for House of Hope for North American theatrical and streaming rights. Set in a pacifist Waldorf school in the occupied West Bank, the documentary follows a teaching couple striving to protect their students’ innocence amid escalating regional conflict. The Oscar-qualifying doc won Best International Feature at Hot Docs this past May.
Eli Roth’s The Horror Section is set to produce Burger Night: Luli, Magda, & Lore, an Argentine spinoff feature of Joe Begos’ alien horror Jimmy and Stiggs (2024). The film is set to follow two friends, one of whom believes they were once abducted by aliens.
Blue Bloods TV director Ralph W. Hemecker has sadly died at 65. The longtime writer, producer, and showrunner has a three-decade-spanning career directing episodes of everything from fantasy series Once Upon a Time and The Vampire Diaries to comic book adaptations like The Flash.
Three short updates from the Venice Film Festival and a zombie comedy. Full breakdown here.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Oscar-winning French filmmaker Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez) is reuniting with Netflix for a feature adaptation of La Nuit Ravagée, based on Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s acclaimed novel.
While some may argue his 13-time Oscar-nominated film Emilia Pérez already ventured into horror territory, this marks Audiard’s first foray into the genre. Set in the outskirts of 1990s Southern France, the film follows a group of teenagers drawn to an abandoned house, unaware of the supernatural force within that feeds on their trauma and becomes inescapable.
The novel was described as a loving homage to old-school horror works, especially Stephen King. Audiard is an intriguing choice as he shares King’s ability to merge social realism with elements of the fantastical.
Unlike Emilia Pérez (2024, trailer), which was acquired by Netflix following its Cannes premiere, La Nuit Ravagée is expected to premiere directly on the streamer, though production has not yet begun.
Tidbits:
One of the last projects to star the late Eric Dane (Euphoria) is headed to the BBC. Kabul is a Mediawan drama series set against the terrifying environment of Afghanistan in 2021 after American troops withdrew and the Taliban wreaked havoc on the city. The six-part drama lands on the BBC next month.
After a decade at Sony Pictures, Jamie Stevens is stepping down as EVP of Worldwide Consumer Products. During his tenure, Stevens helped greatly expand the studio's IP portfolio, working on iconic brands like Ghostbusters, Jumanji, and The Boys. Stevens’ last day will be the first week of Sept., with no word yet on her replacement.
ON THIS DAY
1922. Norman Lear born in New Haven, Connecticut.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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