Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
Tarantino’s script, Oscars’ rules, and art.
Let’s go!
If you enjoy today’s edition, please hit the like button or leave a comment.
Before Quentin Tarantino became a renowned screenwriters, there was one script that blew his mind: Walter Hill’s Hard Times.
Accepting Final Draft’s Hall of Fame Award in 2020, Tarantino shared what resonated about Hill’s script, best known for writing Alien (1979):
“Hill wasn’t just giving a blueprint for how a bunch of technicians can make this movie later... The prose was written for me, the reader. I was supposed to get caught up into this. I was supposed to be excited about this story. And, even more importantly, I was supposed to make the movie in my mind.”
He continued:
“When the script was over and I put it down, I saw it. I saw the movie. Because I didn’t just read a how-to, I had a whole artistic experience with the page.”
Tarantino understands how to craft the artistic journey on the page. His smooth-talking, bloody amalgamations of pop culture sing before they ever hit the screen.
Just take his first film, Reservoir Dogs, which captured the dichotomy between the horrific violence and true tenderness between a group of bank robbers. That movie propelled him into the screenwriting stratosphere. And he won two Oscars for Best Original Screenplay (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained).
At the end of his Final Draft acceptance speech, Tarantino offered some words of advice: to pour your soul into your “cockamamie masterpieces,” a script that is an undiluted version of you.
He shared a private conversation with top studio executives about what they’re really looking for from screenwriters:
“If you want to go into your bedroom and lock the door, and three months later come out with a screenplay, I heard from big people. They’re waiting to read those. They want to read that diamond bullet script by that person that they’ve never heard of before that they can say is their own.”
Executives are not reading that material lately.
For More:
Are you waiting for your big screenwriting career break? The Final Draft Big Break Screenwriting Contest is NOW OPEN for entries. Learn more here.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
The Academy updates 99th Oscars rules, nixing AI.
SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP reach an agreement.
Netflix wins the Tiger King copyright case.
Sony Pictures Classics buys Wishful Thinking w/ Lewis Pullman and Maya Hawke.
Lewis Pullman and Dylan O’Brien star in Cannes Market package Bulls.
Richard Gere returns to romance in Edward Zwick’s Asymmetry.
Lewis Pullman and Dylan O’Brien star in Cannes Market package Bulls.
Diego Luna joins Disney’s live-action Tangled.
Craig Johnson’s I Am Not Your Mother heads to Cannes Market w/ Carrie Coon.
Fernando Meirelles’ Art stars Ralph Fiennes, Colin Farrell, and Wagner Moura.
PBS begins airing Vanessa and Ted Hope’s doc Invisible Nation.
Ketchup Entertainment acquires John Travolta’s JFK crime thriller November 1963.
Friday’s top answer: Charlie Chaplin, over Buster Keaton for lunch.
58% voted for Chaplin.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
AI may be taking over, but they will not take our trophies.
The AMPAS has just released an updated set of new guidelines for the 99th Academy Awards.
Most notably, the Academy is aggressively pushing back on AI, requiring only performances by humans, human-authored screenplays, and solely human creativity to be considered eligible.
Other major changes came within the International Feature Film category, which now allows qualification either through a country’s official submission or by winning a top prize at one of the six major international festivals: Berlin, Busan, Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Venice. This award will now be presented to the director on behalf of the creative team, rather than the country.
To see the rest of the rule changes, here’s the Academy’s guide.
Mini Tidbits:
SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP reach a new agreement! Right now details are under wraps but we can expect AI protections and better pensions. This won’t be finalized until the guild’s 160K members vote.
The courts have sided with Netflix in the infamous Tiger King copyright case. After a cameraman alleged the series used his footage without permission, the court ultimately determined the clips qualified as fair use.
A Baggage Claim worth waiting for. Lufthansa finally reunited director Pavel Talankin (Dir: Mr. Nobody Against Putin) with his missing Oscar after a week of searching.
AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron made $14.9M in 2025. The second-lowest of the major media companies CEOs. Full details here.
Cancellations
NBC’s Brilliant Minds (canceled after 2 seasons)
NBC’s Stumble (canceled after 1 season)
Trailers:
The Network’s Milky Way
Dir: Vasilis Kekatos (Palme d’Or short film winner)
Release: May 5
Release Dates:
Netflix’s Narnia
Dir: Greta Gerwig (Barbie)
Cast: Meryl Streep, Daniel Craig, Emma Mackey, Carey Mulligan
U.S. Theatrical Release: Feb 12, 2027
Netflix Release: April 2, 2027
This is remarkable for Netflix: a full, wide theatrical 50-day release. Gerwig had tremendous bargaining power post-Barbie (even though she signed on to make this film before it became a mega-hit). She upped the original deal from two weeks of IMAX. We hope Netflix will continue to bet on theatrical.
Neon’s Her Private Hell
Dir: Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive)
Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton
Release: July 24
Warner Bros’ Cut Off
Dir: Jonah Hill
Cast: Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig
Release: TBD (previously July 17)
Warner Bros’ Panic Carefully
Dir: Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot)
Cast: Elizabeth Olsen, Julia Roberts, Eddie Redmayne
Release: April 2027
Shoot Dates:
Netflix’s Under Paris 2
Dir: Alexandre Aja (Crawl)
Cast: Bérenice Bejo, Nassim Lyes
Shoot Dates: May ~ TBD 2026
Shooting Wraps:
Lionsgate’s The Resurrection of the Christ: Part One
Dir: Mel Gibson
Budget: $125M
Shooting Wrap: May 2026
Dangerous Games to Play
Dir: Ángel Gómez Hernández (Crawlers)
Wri: Evan Spiliotopoulos (The Pope’s Exorcist)
Shooting Wrap: May 2026
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
It’s a good day to be Lewis Pullman.
Sony Pictures Classics has just made the biggest buy from SXSW with Wishful Thinking, the narrative competition winner.
It’s a surrealist relationship comedy that pits Lewis Pullman (Thunderbolts*) and Maya Hawke (Do Revenge) against each other as a volatile couple who discover their complicated emotional state has supernatural consequences for the world around them.
Hawke and Pullman make a good couple. Him more straight-laced and scientific. Her more of a free spirit. It’s a good split for this type of predicament.
Pullman also stars in a high-profile project heading to Cannes Market:
Bulls
Cast: Lewis Pullman, Dylan O’Brien
Dir: James Morosini (Dir: Magnolia’s I Love My Dad starring Patton Oswalt, Star: Netflix’s It’s What’s Inside)
Financier: QC Entertainment (Get Out)
US Sales Rep: CAA, WME
Synopsis:
A man (O’Brien) books a last-ditch trip to a hedonistic island resort to save his crumbling relationship, only for a hookup with a married woman to put him on a collision course with her alpha-male husband Marco (Pullman).
We can’t wait to see a jacked-up Pullman eviscerate O’Brien. It plays into both their strengths, O’Brien’s natural meekness and Pullman’s newfound crazed dominance, which was exploited so well in Thunderbolts*.
A rare return to the romance genre for Richard Gere (Chicago), who stars in Asymmetry, the first film in eight years from Oscar-winning filmmaker Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai).
Based on Lisa Halliday’s 2018 novel of the same name, it follows a young editorial assistant who sparks a connection with a 70-year-old world-renowned author (Gere).
Besides starring in Paul Schrader’s Oh Canada (2024) or Paramount+’s political drama series The Agency, Gere has appeared in only a handful of projects over the past decade. Long associated with romantic dramas like Pretty Woman (1990) or An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), his return signals a revisit to the genre that defined his career as a leading man.
Asymmetry is headed to the Cannes Market.
Casting tidbits:
Diego Luna in Disney’s Tangled
Da’Vine Joy Randolph in Hold The Devil
And two obits
All those and more here.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
A new Cannes Market project is coming in hot.
I Am Not Your Mother
Cast: Carrie Coon, Ben Platt, Lukas Gage
Dir/Co-writer: Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins)
US sales reps: CAA and UTA
International sales rep: Mister Smith Entertainment (Dangerous Animals)
Synopsis:
A young queer director (Ben Platt) with a murky past becomes fixated on an iconic actress (Coon) seeking a comeback. When she agrees to star in his debut feature, admiration turns to obsession and control.
Johnson’s breakout was the Sundance 2015 film The Skeleton Twins starring Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader as estranged twins bound by their shared trauma and crippling depression. Deeply emotional, his new film resembles that same strained relationship dynamic taking focus, but this time in the form of obsession.
Mini Tidbit:
Toronto’s 33rd Hot Docs Film Festival announces House of Hope as the Best International Feature Documentary winner. Full breakdown and winners here.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT / INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Five months after one of Sundance’s highest-profile films, The Gallerist (starring Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega), eviscerated the art world, there’s a new film taking another shot:
Art
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Colin Farrell, and Wagner Moura
Dir: Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Two Popes)
Based on the Tony-winning play by Yasmina Reza
Prod: Charles Finch (Priscilla)
Prod Co: 193 (sales rep: Die, My Love)
US Sales Rep: CAA
Selling at Cannes Market
Synopsis:
Follows three long-time friends whose relationship fractures when one buys an expensive white painting, another finds it absurd, and the third is caught trying to mediate their conflict over what constitutes art.
Meirelles has transformed from a director who excels at the frenetic, impressionistic, and wonderfully poetic filmmaking (e.g., City of God) to a more stoic and deliberate filmmaker built around tight close-ups (The Two Popes). The argument will no doubt be bombastic, but which approach he takes will be interesting.
Sundance’s The Gallerist, which takes place entirely at a single art gallery, is a farce about what is real and unreal. It is still seeking distribution.
Art feels more about the exploration and the de-evolution of friendship, and Fiennes, Farrell, and Moura couldn’t be a better cast.
Tidbits:
PBS is now airing Invisible Nation. The doc from director Vanessa Hope and producer Ted Hope follows the first female president of Taiwan as she combats the threat of authoritarianism. It’s a wonderfully cinematic piece that pairs intimate close-ups of the president of Taiwan with long-lensed wide shots of her citizens, hungry to maintain their freedom. The doc shows a number of scenarios in which the first female president of Taiwan seems out-matched and that titanic fight is emblematic of her nation’s larger struggle. Check out the film on PBS here.
John Travolta and John F. Kennedy. Ketchup Entertainment acquired the U.S. distribution rights for John Travolta crime thriller November 1963. Directed by Oscar-nominee Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields), the film follows the intense 48 hours surrounding the assassination of JFK through the eyes of those operating in the shadows. Travolta will play Johnny Roselli, a key figure in organized crime on the West Coast and Vegas. It would be great to see John Travolta in a historical thriller – something we haven’t seen him doing for a bit. We loved his performance as a cynical lawyer who later becomes emotionally attached with the victims in A Civil Action (1998).
ON THIS DAY
1959. The 400 Blows is released.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
Follow us on: Facebook | Instagram
Want to advertise with us? Email: clarke.scott@theindustry.co
Yes so overt violence and elongated dialogue is the future of cinema. Lets see how that plays out...