Sundance’s Move, Amazon’s Departure
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Sundance, PTA, 007.
Let’s go!
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Sundance will move to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027.
It’s a wise decision for the festival, whose ties to Park City, Utah, its home since 1981, have grown stale:
Exorbitant post-pandemic prices
Lack of space for growth
Sundance, which signed a 10-year contract with Boulder, will gain:
$34M in tax incentives (over 10 years)
$1.5 M payment to support the move
Beyond the incentives, Boulder retains the DNA of a snowy mountain town while being physically 10x larger than Park City.
Amanda Kelso, Sundance Institute CEO, stated:
“Boulder is an art town, tech town, mountain town, and college town. It is a place where the Festival can build and flourish.”
Visit Boulder CEO, Charlene Hoffman, said:
“There is also a [1-million-plus-square-foot] arts and events center already in the works.”
There was a charming intimacy to running up and down a frigid Main Street. And I will miss the crisp air and electric nostalgia built on decades of dreams.
But Sundance has struggled with the recent departure of Chief Executive Joana Vicente after she couldn’t pull in enough larger donors.
I hope the move to Boulder will prove a revitalization. See you there in 2027.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon MGM Studios, has stepped down.
PTA’s biggest film ever, One Battle After Another has a trailer.
Disney is in talks to acquire Scorsese's Hawaii crime thriller starring The Rock.
Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page share the screen in Universal’s Italianna.
Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort signed a first-look TV deal with 20th Television.
Simon Pegg's Angels in the Asylum ran out of money mid-shoot and is stalled.
Card Counter Oscar Isaac will play the ultimate con man Juan Carlos Guzmán in Apple TV+’s Stowaway.
Josh Brolin is in talks to join Whalefall, a survival thriller.
Steven Yeun joins Nickelodeon’s upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Strange Darling's Willa Fitzgerald joins Russell Crowe in Billion Dollar Spy.
BAFTA TV Awards announced nominations. Baby Reindeer and Netflix lead.
Venice Special Jury Prize winner April has a trailer.
Saban and Roadside Attractions picked up King Ivory (premiere: Venice).
Warner Bros. Discovery merges multiple streaming acquisitions teams.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
The world is not enough. Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon MGM Studios, has stepped down. This is seismic as she has greenlit many of Prime’s top projects, early shows (Mozart in the Jungle), later shows (Rings of Power), and some not-so-good movies (Red One).
This comes right as Amazon closes the rights for 007 for $1bn. The expensive acquisition was driven by Barbara Broccoli’s frustration with Salke’s push to turn the beloved Bond into a Marvel-style franchise. Salke also aggravated director Doug Liman by witholding a theatrical release for Road House.
Salke will leave Amazon but maintain a first-look film and TV producing deal with them.
Courtenay Valenti (Head of Film) and Vernon Sanders (Head of TV) will report directly to studio head Mike Hopkins.
There will be PT Anderson. The director’s action-dark-comedy-political hybrid, One Battle After Another, starring Leo, is his most commercial yet riskiest film yet. Find the trailer and breakdown here:
https://theindustry.co/p/the-high-stakes-of-wbs-one-battle
Disney and 20th Century are set to acquire Martin Scorsese's untitled crime thriller set in 1960s-70s Hawaii, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Dwayne Johnson, and Emily Blunt. Johnson plays an aspiring Hawaiian mob boss fighting for control of the island’s underworld. The script is being written by documentarian Nick Bilton (Fake Famous). No word on production dates.
The Little Mermaid’s Halle Bailey and Bridgeton’s Regé-Jean Page are set to share the screen in Universal Pictures’ Italianna, a rom-com from Matlock director Kat Coiro currently in pre-production. We haven’t seen either in a comedic role, but both excel in romance, so there should be great chemistry. This is five-time Grammy-nominated Bailey’s first nonmusical film, so we’ll see her acting chops on full display. Plot details for Italianna are under wraps.
Tidbits:
Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort signed a first-look TV deal with 20th Television to develop series across Disney platforms. Not a huge surprise that this partnership has formed, with Deadpool 3's $1.338bn return sweetening the deal. Much like Deadpool and Wolverine, it's a mutually beneficial duo.
Simon Pegg's latest film might be dead. Angels in the Asylum, a British indie film starring Pegg and Katherine Waterston (Inherent Vice), halted mid-shoot due to a funding crisis. Disputes over financing and tax credits not coming through have left the production estimated to cost $6.4M in limbo. Producers say they’re unpaid and working urgently to revive the troubled project. Crew are owed £600K, and 150 people were left jobless. This is a nightmare scenario for production, and we are sending well wishes to everyone involved.
Mini Tidbit:
Former Warner Bros. SVP, Brian Worsley has been hired by Legendary Entertainment to take on the role of SVP of Marketing and Creative Advertising. Worsley will play a pivotal role in shaping marketing strategies for the multimedia company after a record-breaking year of success in 2024.
Montreal’s Rodeo FX (Game of Thrones and Dune) acquired Technicolor’s Mikros Animation (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem). Mikros retains its brand and team.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
From Card Counter to Conman. There is a sharp slyness that Oscar Isaac exudes in all his roles that makes him a perfect fit to play Juan Carlos Guzmán in Apple TV+’s Stowaway. Guzman is considered the greatest con man ever to live, stealing millions from the rich and slipping from one identity to the next.
The story opens with a young Guzmán surviving a flight from Colombia to Miami hidden in a cargo plane's wheel well.
Steven Levenson (co-creator: Fosse/Verdon) will develop the series with a pilot by the wonderful Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (dir: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl).
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Josh Brolin is in talks to join Whalefall, a survival thriller directed by Brian Duffield (Hulu’s No One Will Save You). Based on Daniel Kraus' novel, the film follows a diver (Wolfs’ Austin Abrams) trapped inside a whale. That truly sounds horrific, kind of a squishier twist on 127 Hours. Due to the very tight quarters of the film, we don't yet know who Brolin will play, but as always, he brings a gravitas to his roles, be that No Country for Old Men or, more recently, the mad Titan Thanos.
Steven Yeun joins the cast of Paramount and Nickelodeon’s animated Avatar: The Last Airbender. The role is under wraps, but Yeun previously voiced Wan in The Legend of Korra, so he could be reprising. Lately, Yeun has shown incredible voice acting talent in Amazon's Kirkman adaptation of Invincible, now renewed for season 4. It will be exciting to see what he does for Avatar, which is currently set for release on January 30, 2026.
Strange Darling's Willa Fitzgerald joins Russell Crowe in Billion Dollar Spy, a Cold War thriller directed by Amma Asante. Based on a true story, the film follows Soviet engineer Adolf Tolkachev, who risked everything to spy for the CIA. Billion Dollar Spy is currently in production.
Mini Tidbits:
Josh Hartnett on a plane. We’ve seen Snakes on a Plane, Bullet Train, and now we have Fight or Flight. It’s pretty much Hartnett as John Wick fighting his way through an airborne plane with tons of assassins (trailer). He has a bit of the Trap crazy eye going, which is perfect for this. Vertical releases May 9th.
Billy “On the Street” Eichner joins Nicholas Stoller's untitled Amazon MGM comedy as a bailiff, starring alongside Judge Will Ferrell and Zac Efron.
Alyssa Milano joins Bobby Farrelly’s comedy Driver’s Ed, an ensemble teen road trip film currently shooting in North Carolina, also starring Kumail Nanjiani and Molly Shannon.
FESTIVALS
BAFTA TV Awards announced nominations. Here are the most nominated:
Baby Reindeer (8 noms)
Limited Drama
Leading Actor (Gadd)
2x Supporting Actress (Gunning, Mau)
Slow Horses (6 noms)
Leading Actor (Oldman)
2x Supporting Actor (Chung, Pryce)
Studios:
Netflix (26 noms)
Disney+ (15 noms)
Apple TV+ (13 noms)
Check out the full list here.
The ceremony kicks off May 11th.
Michel Franco’s Dreams, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, has sold to France and 18 other territories. Jessica Chastain stars.
Synopsis:
Romance blossoms between a wealthy socialite and a Mexican ballet dancer, intertwining their contrasting lives and cultures.
No word on the US release date.
Step into the world of Invention (2024). The film, which won Best Performance at Locarno, centers on a daughter who received a patent for an electromagnetic healing device in her father’s will. Invention explores various modalities of healing (trailer). The film is available in LA and NYC on April 4th.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Venice Special Jury Prize winner April (dir: Dea Kulumbegashvili), which also played at Sundance, TIFF, and NYFF, has a trailer.
Metrograph, the film’s distributor, led by former A24 exec David Laub, stated:
April is a bold, brilliant, completely original piece of cinema unlike anything we have ever seen…one the most unique and thrillingly unclassifiable films ever made,”
Synopsis:
Nina, an OB-GYN, faces accusations after newborn's death. Her life undergoes scrutiny during investigation. She persists in her medical duties, determined to provide care others hesitate to offer, despite risks.
April will be released, of course, on April… 25th.
Irish director Brian Kirk loves himself an action thriller. His next film, The Dead of Winter, stars Emma Thompson, with Vertical picking up North American rights.
Official Synopsis:
A widowed fisherwoman (Thompson) who is trapped in a Minnesotan blizzard, interrupts the kidnapping of a teenager, soon she realizes that she is the young victim's only hope.
Kirk has built a career on high-intensity and fast-paced dramas, earning praise for his most recent directorial work on Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal.
The Dead of Winter will be the follow-up film to his Chadwick Boseman-led cop thriller 21 Bridges (2019, trailer), which deepens the police showdown movie with loss, passion, and the importance of family. His 2006 film Middletown (trailer) touched on similar ideas, following Matthew Macfadyen as an overzealous priest spiraling into insanity in a battle for love and admiration.
Kirk offers layers of depth to action thrillers. And we can’t wait for The Dead of Winter when it premieres late 2025.
Tidbits:
Saban and Roadside Attractions picked up King Ivory, which premiered in Venice in the Horizons Extra section. Universal will take international rights.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Based upon extensive research with law enforcement, gangs, inmates, migrants, and addicts, an exposé on fentanyl trafficking and its effect on all walks of life.
The dark drama is set in the fentanyl underworld. The cast is made up of Ben Foster and Melissa Leo.
Mini Tidbit:
Turn it up to 11 (again): Bleecker Street will theatrically re-release a newly restored This Is Spinal Tap, from July 5-7.
Co-producer of the Oscar-nominated September 5, Constanze Guttmann, is joining the Leonine Documentaries team. After over a decade with Constantin Film and TV (The Colony), Guttmann is now working with Leonine’s new label to further their goal of producing premium commercial documentaries for a broad audience.
Canal+’s promotion, Japan’s insane tax incentive, and Warner Bros. reorganization:
https://theindustry.co/p/canals-japans-incentive-wbd-reorg
ON THIS DAY
1970. Vince Vaughn born in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
That’s all for the week. See you Monday!
Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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