Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Doug Liman’s fight, Adam Driver’s Rabbit, and Forgotten Island.
Let’s go!
If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Doug Liman developing unauthorized sequel to Road House.
YouTube Q3 ad revenue is $10.3bn (↑16% YoY).
Tubi + Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat partner on four films from YouTube stars.
Netflix orders Rabbit, Rabbit, a hostage thriller starring Adam Driver.
Legendary hires Deadpool & Wolverine co-writer Zeb Wells to script Buck Rogers.
Apple TV drops Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Long Island Compromise adaptation.
Apple developing Jess & Pearl, a WNBA rivalry drama.
Avatar Entertainment acquires TV rights to Robert Enright’s Sam Pope series.
Taraji P. Henson (Hidden Figures) signs first-look deal with Fox Entertainment.
Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld) and Wes Bentley join Ryan Murphy’s FX series The Shards.
Alana Haim joins Aubrey Plaza in The Heidi Fleiss Story.
Jonathan Krisel (Baskets) reteams with Zach Galifianakis for dark comedy Hey Bear.
Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad) joins Mayfair Witches S3.
DreamWorks sets Forgotten Island voice cast, including H.E.R. and Dave Franco.
Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) joins Andrew Haigh’s Mubi drama A Long Winter.
Guy Ritchie & Jason Statham reteam for Viva La Madness from Black Bear.
Raven casts Anthony Mackie, Pablo Schreiber & Ben Foster.
Osgood Perkins' Neon horror, The Young People, casts Johnny Knoxville and Heather Graham.
Ron Perlman launches Asylm Studios.
Grindstone acquires Russell Crowe’s Beast in Me.
Kevin Spacey thriller The Contract acquired by SP Releasing for U.S. theatrical.
Channel 4 sets David Bowie: The Final Act doc.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Doug Liman fights Amazon MGM.
This is a wild one. Doug Liman, who went scorched earth on Amazon for not giving Road House, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, a theatrical release, is trying to direct a sequel.
Liman will NOT direct Road House 2, the Amazon MGM authorized sequel from director Ilya Naishuller (Hardcore Henry (2015), Nobody (2021), Heads of State (2025)), currently in production. But instead, Liman will direct a sequel based on the original Road House (1989), which starred Patrick Swayze. That sequel is called Road House: Dylan, with a script from original writer R. Lance Hill.
How is this legal?
Bottom line, there’s been some chain of title issues. The original script’s copyright may have expired after 35 years, as Hill is saying this was all a work for hire.
Of course, Amazon is pushing back against this in the courts. The first film drove 50M views in two weeks, their biggest film ever.
Liman, above all, is a rule breaker, and we love him for this. Read more about how his film Bourne Identity changed cinema.
We now have a clearer picture of the 1000 staff laid off by Paramount, a Skydance Company (5.5% of staff).
The layoff hit the following departments and people:
TV
Motion Picture
CBS News
Staff cuts include:
Ramsey Naito, President of Paramount Animation
Likely getting replaced to make way for Skydance animation
Teri Fleming, EVP, Marketing, Paramount Global Distribution
Pamela Soper and Amanda Palley, SVPs, Current Programming at CBS
Jeff Grossman, Head of Programming, Paramount+
Amy Campbell, CMO: Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon
It’s our understanding that another 1000 people will be laid off across all departments. CEO David Ellison is also looking to use these cuts to save around $2bn.
YouTube Q3 2025 results:
$10.3bn ad revenue
↑ 16% from last year
12.6% Total TV Usage (Nielsen)
↑ 19% from last year
Ahead of Netflix by 52%
This is YouTube’s biggest quarter of all time. And they’re hitting an inflection point with AI, making the company more efficient. So much so that they’re offering their employees a buyout if they choose to leave.
Tubi and Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat are partnering on four feature films from YouTube stars, so far they announced:
Sundown with Kinigra Deon
85 South: Dead End with DC Young Fly, Chico Bean, Karlous Miller
The other two films in the initial four-film slate have not yet been announced.
Tidbits:
Netflix has ordered Rabbit, Rabbit, a tense hostage drama starring Adam Driver from creator Peter Craig (Dope Thief). Directed by Philip Barantini (Adolescence), the series follows an escaped convict’s truck-stop standoff that spirals into a psychological experiment. Driver also EPs. This is a great get from Netflix. Dope Thief was high intensity, driven by Brian Tyree Henry’s stillness. Craig should have no problem writing a psychologically spiraling operatic character for Driver. And if Barantini wants to use long takes to up the tension, this is going to become my most anticipated show.
Five years after acquiring the rights to Buck Rogers, Legendary has tapped Deadpool & Wolverine co-writer Zeb Wells to script a new feature adaptation. Plot details are being kept secret, but this thing has been in development HELL. No one has been brave or stupid enough to build a Buck Rogers universe encompassing film since 1979. Best of luck to Zeb. D&W was a pretty tight script that dealt with all sorts of time travel and sci-fi shenanigans. It sounds like a good fit!
Despite igniting a Hollywood bidding war last summer, Apple TV is no longer developing Long Island Compromise, a familial success story written by Fleishman Is in Trouble author Taffy Brodesser-Akner. A novel of tradition and survival, it follows businessman Carl Fletcher confronting his American Jewish family’s history after his shocking abduction.
Mini Tidbits:
Apple is developing Jess & Pearl, a women’s basketball drama starring WNBA rookie Paige Bueckers. Created by Scandal’s Zahir McGhee, the film follows two phenoms turned rivals.
London and LA-based Avatar Entertainment (Operacion Kazan) has acquired the series rights to the 15-book Sam Pope collection for TV. From author Robert Enright the Jack Reacher-esque series follows a trained assassin who goes from the military’s greatest ally to their most wanted criminal.
Disney has finally finished its acquisition of a 70% stake in Fubo, merging it with Hulu + Live TV to form the sixth-largest U.S. pay-TV operator, reaching nearly six million total subscribers.
Severance’s Fifth Season’s recent layoffs include Jill Arthur the EVP of TV Development and Production. Arthur left Amazon in 2022 to join the indie studio now a part of the 16-employee layoff happening following the departure of CEO Chris Rice.
Taraji P. Henson (Empire) signs a first-look, multi-year deal with Fox Entertainment Studios for her TPH Entertainment (Time Alone). This new partnership comes shortly after the Hidden Figures (2016) actress also signed a two-picture deal with Netflix.
Fox Sports has made a strategic investment (number not disclosed) in Tom Brady’s studio Shadow Lion, with a goal to create original sports and culture content, starting with a Michigan football docuseries.
After half a century, cable mogul John Malone is stepping down as chairman of Liberty Media and Liberty Global, holding companies he founded. His oversight is extensive, spanning companies like Warner Bros. Discovery, SiriusXM, and Formula 1.
A book, then a movie, now an interactive experience? Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is getting turned into an experiential event, with the team behind the interactive Van Gogh experience working on it. More details will be announced early next year. (trailer for 2006 movie).
General Hospital head writer Margaret DePriest has died at 94. DePriest has certainly left her mark on the soap opera universe working as a writer and producer on General, Days of Our Lives, ABC’s All My Children, and NBC’s Another World.
Cancellations:
Starz’s BMF (canceled after 4 Seasons)
Release date:
Warner Bros.’ Hello Kitty
Release: July 21, 2028
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Evan Rachel Wood takes on a fractured reality, yet again.
The Emmy-nominated Westworld (2016-22) actress is joining Ryan Murphy’s The Shards, adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’ deceitful thriller novel.
Set in the 80s, the FX series is a dark coming-of-age tale of glamour, mystery, and paranoia, echoing similar themes to Wood’s performance as the self-aware Dolores in dystopian sci-fi drama Westworld (s1 trailer).
Her role in The Shards is being kept under wraps with no set premiere date as of now. Wes Bentley (Yellowstone, American Beauty) also joins the cast.
Alana Haim joins Aubrey Plaza in The Heidi Fleiss Story, a biopic centered around the infamous “Hollywood Madam.”
A known TV personality, Fleiss (Plaza), was caught running the world’s largest prostitution ring. The film will follow the time ahead of her trial as she attempts to blackmail her way to freedom with the help of an aspiring writer (Haim).
Haim was great in Licorice Pizza, and we loved watching how Cooper Hoffman slowly ground down her rough edges. In this new project, we can imagine Plaza driving her insane in a very delightful way.
Rachel Sennott (Bottoms, I Love LA) co-writes with Pinky Promise (prod co: Scar Jo’s Eleanor the Great), producing.
Tidbits:
Writer and director of Baskets, Jonathan Krisel, is reuniting with his star, Zach Galifianakis. His next project is Hey Bear, a dark revenge comedy starring Mia Goth (Frankenstein), Zach Galifianakis, and Dan Stevens (I’m Your Man). Written by Beef Emmy winner Carrie Kemper, it’s billed as a “coming-of-rage” story about a grieving wife hunting the bear that devoured her husband. This is kind of an incredible premise, with Goth’s ferocity, I would not want to be that bear.
I’d say Marie was pretty witchy. The upcoming third season of AMC Network’s Mayfair Witches is welcoming Breaking Bad (scene) alum Betsy Brandt to its ensemble cast. Brandt is joining Alexandra Daddario (The White Lotus) and Harry Hamlin (Mad Men) with the third season focused on “the mythology of witchcraft,” with the madness taking place in nowhere else but Salem, Massachusetts. Production has just begun in Canada.
H.E.R. (The Color Purple), Liza Soberano (Lisa Frankenstein), Lea Salonga (Miss Saigon), Dave Franco (The Rental), Manny Jacinto (The Good Place), and Jenny Slate (Marcel the Shell With Shoes On) lead DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island. The adventure comedy follows two friends stranded on Nakali, a world where escaping may mean sacrificing their shared memories and emotions. Releasing Sept. 25, 2026, via Universal.
The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach is the newest ensemble member to join Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter from Mubi. The film centers on a family beginning to prep for the long winter ahead. The casting comes not long after his role as The Thing in Marvel’s $520M-grossing Fantastic Four: First Steps movie. Filming on A Long Winter is currently ongoing in Alberta, Canada.
Mini Tidbits:
Cuba Gooding Jr. is back in Angels. The Jerry Maguire Oscar winner is co-starring in Angels in Darkness, a follow-up to Angels Fallen: Warriors of Peace, where Gooding played a spiritual warrior (trailer).
One of CBS’s biggest stars in its early days, Maria Riva (Studio One), has passed away at 100. Riva’s largest roles were as a child like Catherine the Great in The Scarlet Empress (1934); she later turned to stage performances and commercial work. Notably, she’s the daughter of Marlene Dietrich.
FESTIVALS
AFM Projects:
Viva La Madness
Cast: Jason Statham
Dir: Guy Ritchie (Wrath of Man)
Prod Co/International Sales Rep: Black Bear (Christy)
Shoot date: Jan 2026
An action-thriller loosely adapted from J.J. Connolly’s Layer Cake Sequel.
Raven
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Pablo Schreiber & Ben Foster
Dir: Tom Sierchio (stunts: Transformers, Trainwreck)
Prod: Jamie R. Thompson (Old Henry)
Prod: Michael Benaroya (Margin Call).
Larry Kasanoff (Mortal Kombat) will head a new Cartoon Coalition, an LA-based animation studio launching at AFM with three films:
World’s Top Monster
Level Up
Krazed For Karaoke
All three are being developed for global animated features, TV, and theme park content.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Osgood Perkins (dir: Longlegs, The Monkey) finds some young people.
Neon’s go-to horror director, Osgood Perkins, is gearing up for his 4th film for the distributor with The Young People.
The cast is led by rising actresses Nico Parker (How to Train Your Dragon) and Lola Tung (Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty), and now:
Johnny Knoxville
Heather Graham
No word on plot, but this is already shooting in Vancouver. Perkins’ third horror with Neon, The Keeper, releases on Nov 14.
Asylm Studios: Ron Perlman (Hellboy), like quite a few big names of late, has decided to form his own LA-based studio.
Asylm’s first project is Auden Bui’s feature debut Kodak Super-XX, a psychological thriller starring Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars) and David Dastmalchian (Late Night With The Devil). Dastmalchian has also signed on as a producer, and Tony Rettenmaier (They Cloned Tyrone) wrote what is being described as a story about loneliness, art, and obsession.
With this fledgling product to get it off the ground, Asylm hopes to set itself apart from other studio models by offering equitable profit sharing across creative and crew roles. It’s a great team and we wish them luck on this promising venture.
Six indie films get picked up for US distribution:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Industry to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.