Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Supergirl doesn’t soar, Harbour’s spy games and Once.
Let’s go!
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THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Supergirl opens to $38M domestic and $68M worldwide.
Millie Bobby Brown and David Harbour will reunite for a Netflix spy series.
Hulu is developing political high-school drama Young Americans.
Mercedes Ron signs a first-look deal with Amazon MGM Studios.
Filming begins on the Romy & Michele sequel with Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow.
Rob Lowe says a St. Elmo’s Fire follow-up script is in the works.
Tim Robbins joins Emma Stone and Chris Pine in Universal rom-com The Catch.
Ann Blyth, Oscar-nominated star of Mildred Pierce, dies at 98.
Pablo Larraín returns to Netflix with Chilean coup drama Once.
Stephen Poliakoff will write Malta siege political thriller The Order.
K. Bhagyaraj, “The Screenplay King” of Tamil Cinema, dies at 73.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Box office updates. There were three new releases that cracked the top ten:
#2 - $38M - Supergirl (DC)
$68M worldwide
$186M budget
RT: 56%
Week 1
This is a disappointing result for a superhero film, especially one that cost so much. In fact, it opened even lower than another recent female-lead superhero film that performed poorly:
The Marvels (2023)
$46M opening
$84M domestic total
$206M worldwide
RT: 63%
$317M budget
$215M net loss
Supergirl also has a lower RT score than The Marvels, so we’re not optimistic that it’ll hold well next week.
#4 - $8.4M - Jackass: Best and Last (Paramount)
$10.3M worldwide
$10M budget
RT: 88%
Week 1
This is the highest-rated Jackass film of the series. Sadly, this is the lowest-earning opening weekend at the box office.
The latest installment, Jackass Forever (2022), opened at $23M, and Jackass 3D (2010) opened at $50M.
#8 - $2M - BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War — The Calamity (Fathom)
Notably, A24’s The Invite had a sensational per-screen average of $54K across 7 theaters. Angelina Jolie-led Couture from Vertical had a very low per-screen average of $576 across 235 screens.
Keeping it in the family. Netflix’s favorite father-daughter duo, Millie Bobby Brown and David Harbour, are set to reunite for a new show for the streamer from Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne and A24.
The untitled series is loosely inspired by Paul Warner’s spy thriller novel A Spy in the Blood. Harbour will play a disgraced FBI agent turned security expert who is pulled back into the world of espionage when his estranged daughter (Brown), now an FBI agent herself, goes missing during a mission.
Harbour’s Chief Jim Hopper began Stranger Things as a hardened, reclusive sheriff, annoyed with the world, until taking in Brown’s mysterious Eleven gave him a renewed sense of purpose. Her unexpected arrival gave him a second chance at fatherhood, with their sweet relationship growing into one of the emotional cornerstones of the series. While under very different circumstances, to watch Harbour search for Brown again will be a special treat for Stranger Things fans still in mourning.
The straight-to-series order is hardly surprising, bringing together the creative forces behind Netflix’s two highest-ranked series. Thorne, Brown, and Harbour are also attached as producers.
Tidbits:
Romeo and Juliet in front of the White House. Hulu is developing a high-school drama pilot, Young Americans, EPed by Bruce Miller (Showrunner: The Handmaid’s Tale). The show will follow a forbidden romance between two students from opposing political families, set in Capitol Crest Academy in Washington, D.C., where America’s elite politicians send their children. 20th Television is the studio behind this project and will be written by Chris Hutton (Wri: Shangri-La Suite) and Eddie O’Keefe (Wri: When the Street Lights Go On).
The writer behind Prime Video’s Culpables movies, Mercedes Ron, has just signed a first-look deal with Amazon MGM Studios. Her Spanish-language YA trilogy became Amazon’s most-watched international original film franchise and is now being adapted into an English-language series, which completed production earlier this year. Internationally and domestically, Ron has had a hand in a number of Prime’s YA adaptations, including The Summer I Turned Pretty and Maxton Hall: The World Between Us.
Mini Tidbits:
“One Day has become Day One.” Thirty years after the original, filming for the Romy & Michele sequel with Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow is officially underway.
Speaking of long-awaited sequels, Rob Lowe has shared a script is in the works for a follow-up of St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), with the original Brat Pack eager to reunite.
Luis de la Rosa (Animator: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) dies in a train incident while attending the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. De la Rosa was 34.
Greenlit:
Adult Swim’s Heist Brothers
Showrunner: Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack)
Renewals:
Prime Video’s Every Year After (for S2)
Showrunner: Amy B. Harris (prod. Sex and the City)
Trailers:
Amazon MGM Studios’ Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother
Cast: Mahershala Ali, Tramell Tillman
Release: Sept. 25
Prime Video’s The Love Hypothesis
Cast: Lili Reinhart, Tom Bateman
Release: Sept. 23
Janus Films’ The Samurai and the Prisoner
Dir/Wri: Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure)
Premiered at Cannes
Release: Jul. 31
Sea of Glass
Dir/Wri: Alexis Alexiou (Tetarti 04.45)
Release TBD
Release Dates:
Prime Video’s Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter
Dir: Jason Hehir (The Last Dance)
Release: Aug. 20
Crunchyroll’s Kagurabachi
Cast: Katsuyuki Konishi
Release: April 2027
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Return of a Hollywood Legend. Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption) joins Universal Pictures’ romantic comedy The Catch, starring Emma Stone and Chris Pine. The film is being described as Bull Durham (1988) meets Notting Hill (1999), with Emma Stone playing a woman who becomes the most hated person in baseball after touching a ball at the wall, turning it into a home run, and costing her team a crucial game. Robbins is playing Stone’s father, his first film role in seven years since Dark Waters (2019). Sissy Spacek (Carrie) also joins the project as Stone’s aunt. Dave McCary (Dir: Brigsby Bear), who is Emma Stone’s husband, will direct the film.
The Oscar-winning actor and director Tim Robbins became a Hollywood icon with his role as Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption (1994), best known for playing a wide range of characters with warmth at their core. He can play a psychologically broken man in Mystic River (2003) to a lovable, dim-witted pitcher in the sports comedy Bull Durham (1988). Pair his thoughtful on-screen presence with the high energy of Emma Stone from her earlier films like Easy A (2010), and then we think The Catch has the potential to be a home run.
Mini Tidbits:
Imani Lewis (First Kill) and Tanya Wright (Butterfly Rising) join horror-drama Killa, directed by first-time writer-director Laci Dent. The film will follow Asa Jones, a girl from Louisiana who wants to conquer the world of girls’ basketball, only to begin to lose herself to a mysterious force.
Indie thriller Cut Your Teeth adds Arthur Langlie (A Complete Unknown), Riley Dandy (That’s Amor), and Oliver Stark (9-1-1: Lone Star). The film follows an engagement party weekend that spirals out of control after a betrayal breaks the trust of a close friend group.
Oscar-nominated child actress and singer Ann Blyth (Mildred Pierce, clip) has died at 98. Her breakout role as Joan Crawford’s scheming daughter in the 1945 melodrama earned her a supporting Oscar nomination at just 16.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
Action thriller Irish Dog has been pre-sold across multiple international territories ahead of its planned fall shoot, with Munich-based Iuvit Media Sales brokering the deal out of Cannes. Led by The Rip’s Scott Adkins, the film will see him as a London nightclub bouncer who takes a spontaneous trip to Spain that spirals into a crime-infested nightmare. Distribution includes Tiberius Film (The Last Scout) in German-speaking Europe, MediaSquad (The Adventurers) in Eastern Europe, and Dimension Pictures (Kill Zone 2) for India.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Pablo Larraín is back at Netflix with Once, a Chilean coup drama set during the collapse of the democratic government in 1973. The film will unfold across eleven interconnected stories during the period of the Chilean dictatorship, charting the real human consequences following the bombing of La Moneda Palace and the death of then-president Salvador Allende.
Each of Larraín’s recent English-language films (Jackie, Spencer, Maria) reframed one iconic woman through a singular lens. Even the titles of his films reflect that discipline; however, Once disrupts the pattern. Widening the scope of his usual individual fixation, Larraín is exploring another side of history not just through one fragmented perspective but with multiple whole truths.
Larraín is joined by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (The Wolf of Wall Street), with shooting expected to begin later this year.
Tidbit:
Michael Medico (Dir: Netflix’s XO, Kitty) takes over as director of Bill Burr’s (Old Dads) comedy Bender. The project is described as Superbad (2007) meets Derry Girls, based on the late-’70s, post-punk rock era of Dublin. Medico takes over the position from Adam Bernstein (Dir: Breaking Bad), who exited the project for unknown reasons.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
British screenwriter Stephen Poliakoff (BBC’s Perfect Strangers) is set to write The Order, an epic political thriller centered on the 1565 Great Siege of Malta. The eight-part series marking Poliakoff’s return to the small screen in six years continues his streak of historical dramas, described as “an extraordinary collision of politics, faith, ambition and survival at a moment when the fate of nations hung in the balance.”
Production is expected to begin early next year in Malta.
Veteran Indian filmmaker K. Bhagyaraj, or “The Screenplay King” of Tamil Cinema, dies at 73. He directed Indian classics like Mundhanai Mudichu (1983), Andha 7 Naatkal (1981), and Indru Poi Naalai Vaa (1981).
ON THIS DAY
2001. Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence is released.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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