Robert De Niro vs. Robert De Niro
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Warner Bros.’s gangsters, Sony’s time travel, and Cameron Diaz back in action.
Let’s go!
To our readers in LA being affected by the fires, our heart goes out to you. Please stay safe.
Robert De Niro is one of the most powerful performers to ever grace the silver screen. So what will it mean for cinema when he plays dual roles in a single film?
It’s Warner Bros.’s gambit that this concept, realized in their upcoming Alto Knights, will be box office gold.
Here’s the synopsis:
Vito Genovese (De Niro) and Frank Costello (De Niro), a pair of Italian Americans who run two separate crime families in the mid-20th century. Genovese attempted to assassinate Costello in 1957, although Costello retired from the mob.
The story is familiar, as De Niro has played all shades of mobster throughout his career:
Mean Streets (1973): Small-time hustler, reckless hothead
Godfather 2 (1974): Italian mobster, calculating patriarch
The Untouchables (1987): Chicago kingpin, brutal enforcer
Goodfellas (1990): Irish gangster, charismatic schemer
The Irishman (2019): Aging hitman
The success of Alto Knights will hinge on how effectively the two De Niros—at once allies and adversaries—can both complement and oppose one another. Ironically, one of the best examples of dual antagonists comes from a non-De Niro Scorsese film, The Departed, where Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon’s double agents clash.
That said, De Niro’s most remarkable face-off might be with Al Pacino in Heat (1995). De Niro plays a high-class bank robber, and Pacino plays a Los Angeles police veteran, and they have a chance meeting in a diner. De Niro brilliantly oscillates between bank robber and monk. Displaying an innate ability to listen, empathize, and then light it all on fire. It’s precisely this volatile combination—now De Niro vs. De Niro—that could determine whether Alto Knights finds its spark.
We’ll see what happens when this is released on March 21st.
For More
Alto Knights trailer
De Niro vs. Pacino Heat scene.
Alto Knights is directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man). His last film was the HBO’s The Survivor (2021, trailer).
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Sony is adapting Until Dawn, the immensely popular horror choose-your-own-adventure video game.
Production for Ridley Scott’s Bee Gees biopic (You Should Be Dancing) has been pushed to September.
Warner Bros. Discovery has appointed Anthony Noto, SoFi CEO, and Joey Levin, outgoing IAC CEO, to its board.
Karen McCullah (writer: Legally Blonde) is writing The Last Resort, a rom-com set in the Philippines.
More postponements due to the LA wildfires, including Critics Choice Awards.
How to Have Sex star Mia McKenna-Bruce will lead the new film by Claire Denis—The Cry of the Guards.
Alex Essoe (Doctor Sleep) stars in The Avalanche, a psychological horror film following ex-lovers buried in an avalanche.
Sitcom wunderkind Frankie Muniz returns to acting to star in Renner, where he plays an AI engineering genius.
Sundance 2025 drops its list of Jury members, including Celine Song and Elijah Wood.
Gravitas Ventures has acquired US/Canadian rights for Adult Best Friends (premiere: Tribeca).
Netflix acquired Anuja, an Oscar-shortlisted film (producer: Mindy Kaling)
Jaume Collet-Serra (dir: Orphan) returns to horror with The Woman in the Yard being released by Blumhouse.
Damiano Michieletto’s directorial debut, Primavera, about famed Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, has pre-sold to major distributors worldwide.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Until Dawn scares me. The immensely popular horror choose your own adventure game was nearly just a movie itself with a few quick time events sprinkled throughout and a whole lot of choices. A very popular game for streaming, the gross-out horror gags and the compelling cast led to a very fun and replayable slasher romp.
This adaptation worries me a bit; director David F. Sandberg (dir: Lights Out) is saying things that make gamers nervous, things like “expanding upon the universe” or “capturing the tone, but innovating.” From the recently released first look, he describes the mechanic they will use to try and mimic the multiple outcomes (and deaths) of the game as some kind of time loop mechanic.
While he packages it as a way to experience multiple anthologies of horror scenarios, this isn't really what the game is about. Time loops and horror can be done to great effect (see Happy Death Day), but not only has that been done before, but we are reaching a growing multi-verse alternate reality fatigue that is hitting critical levels. Understandably, trying to capture what made this video game special is impossible in a neatly packaged theater setting.
The closest we ever got was the fun but clunky triple ending of Clue. The multiple-timeline time loop thing just seems like a catch-all for natural video game mechanics. The biggest part is in all of this rush to capture the “tone” it appears like they have cast aside everything else that was great about the game.
The spooky and unique setting of a Blackwood mountain lodge has been replaced with what appears to be a suburban house.
The characters don't seem to really match their in-game counterparts, so one would assume this is an original story, which for these gaming movies gets dicey. Time and time again major wins like The Last of Us, another cinematic game, sticking as close to the source material as possible is the way to go. Taking the parts of a game that are convenient and throwing away the parts the director doesn't get, well, that's how you get Borderlands folks. I am not writing off the whole thing, but I think this might be another note of Sony Pictures missing the plot.
Check out the game here.
Then look at the first look here.
You decide, choose your own fate.
Tidbits:
Production for Ridley Scott’s Bee Gees biopic (You Should Be Dancing) has been pushed to September. In the meantime, the director will prioritize shooting the Jacob Elordi starring The Dog Stars in April. Scott is 87 and not slowing down his shooting schedule. It seems to be accelerating (GQ interview).
Warner Bros. Discovery has appointed Anthony Noto, SoFi CEO, and Joey Levin, outgoing IAC CEO, to its board. Both will earn $345K this year ($105K cash retainers + $240K stock grants). The board now has 13 directors, including CEO David Zaslav. Noto and Levin bring financial and operational expertise as WBD continues to regain footing after the pandemic, two labor strikes, $40bn in debt, a 60% stock price drop since 2022, a $9bn write down on their assets, and a possible split.
Veteran Rom-Com creators team for The Last Resort. Donald Petrie (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Miss Congeniality) directs and Karen McCullah (Legally Blonde, The Ugly Truth).
Petrie hasn’t directed a film since the Richard Dreyfuss flop My Life in Ruins (2009). And McCullahs’s latest was over a decade ago, Crazy Kind of Love (2013). We’re hoping they’re overdue for a hit.
Here’s the synopsis for The Last Resort:
A hotel executive who is sent to scout a new resort location in the Philippines. She becomes captivated by the breathtaking scenery and the warmth of its people — and also meets Ben, a charming expatriate charter pilot.
Production is set for early this year.
More event/premiere closures due to the LA wildfires:
Critics Choice Awards
Pushed: Jan 12 → Jan 26
Netflix’s The Night Agent - Season 2
More organizations have started pledging money:
Entertainment Community Fund (Annette Benning is the Chairman)
WGA West & PGA - $1M (list of resources)
DGA Relief Grant - $350K
Get a full list of event cancellations:
https://theindustry.co/p/cancellations-la-wildfires
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Mia McKenna-Bruce (How to Have Sex) stars in Claire Denis’ new film The Cry of the Guards (previously titled The Fence). Actors Matt Dillon (Crash) and French actor Isaach de Bankolé (Chocolat) are attached as the leads.
Official Synopsis:
As project supervisor Horn is welcoming his young partner Léone into the hut he shares with young and impetuous engineer Cal, a black man called Alboury appears outside the railings surrounding their quarters. Inflexible, hovering like a ghost in the darkness, he is determined to stay there until they return the body of his brother to him, who was killed on the site.
No word on who McKenna-Bruce is playing but she is wildly lively and painstakingly vulnerable in Mubi’s How to Have Sex, a performance for which she won the BAFTA Rising Star award. The film explores the journey of three British teenage girls in Crete navigating sex, consent, and self-discovery. The trailer feels like a more mature version of Spring Break.
The Cry of the Guards is set to begin production in January 2025 in Senegal.
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Tidbits:
Alex Essoe (Doctor Sleep) stars in The Avalanche, a psychological horror film following ex-lovers buried in an avalanche. Essoe has made a name for herself in the horror genre among various titles such as The Pope’s Exorcist (2023) and the Netflix mini-series Midnight Mass (2021). Willing to lean far into the uncomfortable mental anguish of horror, she conveys terror as pain, which adds a certain realism and edge to her performance. Marking Johnny Coffeen's directorial debut, The Avalanche begins filming this month.
Malcolm in the Middle Aged: Sitcom wunderkind Frankie Muniz returns to star in Renner. Muniz plays an AI engineering genius who has trouble talking with women (trailer). That’s the exact same character arc he had in Agent Cody Banks (2003, Trailer). No word on Renner’s release date.
Back in Action, starring Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz, has immense charisma, which makes the somewhat common plot (former CIA spies are pulled back into espionage) into a streaming must-see (sadly not theatrical). What makes this even more explosive (excuse the phrasing) is that the film marks a major return for Diaz and Foxx.
Cameron Diaz hasn’t acted for a decade:
https://theindustry.co/p/cameron-diaz-is-back
And Foxx just had a near-death experience, as he explains with heart-wrenching poignancy in his Netflix special:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81022398
Check out the new trailer for Netflix’s Back in Action. Or just check out the film for real when it drops on Friday.
FESTIVALS
Sundance 2025 drops its list of Jury members.
U.S. Dramatic Competition:
Reinaldo Marcus Green (dir: King Richard, Bob Marley: One Love)
Arian Moayed (Actor: Succession)
Celine Song (Dir: Past Lives)
U.S. Documentary Competition
Steven Bognar (dir: American Factory)
Vinnie Malhotra (President: The Obama’s Higher Ground)
Marcia Smith (president: Firelight Media - doc non-profit)
World Cinema Dramatic Competition:
Ava Cahen (Artistic Director: Cannes Critics Week)
Wanuri Kahiu (dir: first Kenyan film to screen at Cannes)
Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Judas and the Black Messiah)
NEXT section:
Elijah Wood
Full list of jury members here.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT AND INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Gravitas Ventures has acquired US/Canadian rights for Adult Best Friends (premiere: Tribeca).
Here’s the synopsis:
Inseparable since childhood, levelheaded Katie takes her codependent best friend Delaney on a girls' trip to break the news that she is getting married. Things do not go as planned.
The film stars the film’s writer/director, Delaney Buffett, and the co-writer, Katie Corwin, alongside Zachary Quinto.
Gravitas Ventures’ SVP of Acquisitions, Bill Guentzler stated:
“This heartfelt and hilarious comedy expertly portrays the dynamic of growing apart in a friendship. The chemistry between Buffett and Corwin is the real selling point of this film.”
Here is a marvelously awkward clip. No word on release date.
Tidbits:
Jaume Collet-Serra (dir: Orphan) returns to horror with The Woman in the Yard. Blumhouse presents this objectively minimalist take on horror follows Ramona (Danielle Deadwyler) as she confronts a menacing visitor on her farm. Known for Orphan and Carry-On, Collet-Serra’s filmography spans hits and misses. But this trailer seems to have split the audience. It starts very starkly, and it ramps up near the end. Check it out here. The Woman in the Yard arrives in theaters March 28.
Netflix acquires Anuja, an Oscar-shortlisted film. Mindy Kaling is a producer in the acclaimed short that explores child labor and girls' education set in New Delhi, India. Here’s a clip from the film.
Damiano Michieletto’s directorial debut, Primavera, about famed Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi, has pre-sold to major distributors worldwide, with Memento International (Call Me By Your Name) handling further deals at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris. Check out the astonishingly vibrant first look photo.
ON THIS DAY
1948. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart premieres.
See you tomorrow!
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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Only people who did not truly play Until Dawn multiple times will like the movie. Same thing was true for Last of Us. The People who loved it were not the gamers who lived and died with the characters. The characters are so important, specially their looks but casting don’t care as long as the director personally likes actor and enough none fans give profits.
Thank you for writing that excellent article about Robert De Niro’s new film! I'm looking forward to seeing him on the big screen again. He is such an icon and legend, both at the same time! I also appreciate the well wishes for us out here in Los Angeles. Thank you again!