Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
Fox’s Roku, Disney’s Ground and Dragoons.
Let’s go!
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Returning for Season 3 after a 12-year hiatus, Lisa Kudrow is back in The Comeback.
She’s TV’s most nonchalant micromanager. We met her at a low point; by her standards, she’s podcasting and day-playing in indie films until she gets a starring role in an AI-written series.
It’s a speculative fantasy so grounded that we realize how much we’ve all been turned into performers by technology.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Fox is set to acquire Roku in a $22bn deal.
Higher Ground Productions is developing an animated fantasy series with Disney.
Netflix is adapting Hannah Grace’s hockey romance novel Icebreaker for TV.
Hulu is developing a time-travel graphic novel adaptation of RetroActive.
Sony Pictures TV’s Maxine Productions develops a true-crime docuseries.
Anya Taylor-Joy joins The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.
Peter Serafinowicz joins HBO’s Harry Potter series as Peeves the Poltergeist.
Kumail Nanjiani, Pamela Adlon, and BD Wong cast in Prime Video’s Sex Criminals.
Michael J. Fox will voice the lead in animated feature Dragoons.
Rod Blackhurst’s viral horror short Alone Time is being adapted into a feature.
Yesterday’s correct answer: Outlander, Richard Gadd acted in an episode.
57% got it correct.
After 12 years, Lisa Kudrow is back in The Comeback. Click here for more info.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Let there be mergers. Fox is set to acquire Roku for $22bn. Here’s a breakdown:
$25bn implied equity value
$22bn enterprise value
$160/share for Roku
$14.6bn in cash (60%) / 40% Fox Class A stock
Fox shareholders will own ~73% of the combined company
Roku shareholders will own ~27%
Roku founder/CEO Anthony Wood will join Fox’s board.
Before the deal:
Fox
7.2% total U.S. TV viewership
Tubi is 2.2% of that share
Tubi had 100M monthly active users
Roku Channel
3% total U.S. TV viewership
100M+ streaming households
Together, Fox and Roku would hold the third-largest share of U.S. television viewership at 10.2%, more than Netflix’s 8.2% share but less than the combined 14.2% share that Paramount and Warner Bros. will have if/when they merge.
The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval.
However, questions remain, as Roku is a gatekeeper for other streamers such as Disney+, Paramount+, HBO Max, Peacock, and Netflix.
Tidbits:
After an eight-year run with Netflix, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions (Leave the World Behind) are working with Disney on the musical fantasy animated series Journey. Created by animator Matt Munn (Rio 2), the series follows a young heroine named Journey, who goes to a forbidden territory to solve her father’s disappearance and discovers a powerful magic within herself. Higher Ground previously worked on family-friendly projects like Netflix's children's series Ada Twist, Scientist.
Netflix is joining the hockey romance craze right now with a TV adaptation of Hannah Grace’s bestselling novel, Icebreaker, in the works. An enemies-to-lovers story, the college romance follows a competitive figure skater and a disciplined hockey captain who have an undeniable chemistry. Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper will EP via her Unwell Productions, along with Gossip Girl co-EP Amanda Lasher on board as showrunner, and Jade Bartlett (wri: Miller’s Girl) attached as a writer.
Hulu is developing a series adaptation of the Humanoids graphic novel RetroActive. Based on the comic series of the same name, the show will follow the invention of time travel and a new war that wages between global powers as they exploit information from the past. Bruce Miller (Showrunner: Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale) is on board as an EP. We have seen what a Bruce Miller dystopia looks like in The Handmaid’s Tale, a world of totalitarian control. We would love to see how that dreadful atmosphere could play into an espionage genre.
Mini Tidbits:
Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) wrote a new song, “Along the Way,” for the live-action version of Disney’s Moana. The song is performed by Catherine Laga’aia, who plays Moana, Dwayne Johnson, who plays Maui, and the original voice of animated Moana, Auli‘i Cravalho.
Sony Pictures Television’s Maxine Productions (The Fall of Diddy) is taking on the tragic 2023 murder of Kristil Krug in a new untitled true-crime docuseries.
Disney Branded Television rebrands itself as Disney Kids & Family.
Renewals:
Netflix’s The Four Seasons (Renewed for S3)
Trailers:
American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez
Release: July 17
Netflix’s The Last House
Cast: Greta Lee, Wagner Moura
Release: Aug 7
The Wave
Release: June 26
Film Movement’s Barrio Triste
Release: July 10
First Look:
Live Nation Studios’ Youth Juice
Release Date:
Paramount’s Untitled Duffer Brothers’ film
Dir: Duffer Brothers (Stranger Things)
Release Date: Nov 3, 2028
Neon’s Sheep in the Box
Dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters)
Cannes Premiere: May 16
U.S. Release: July 24
After 12 years, Lisa Kudrow is brilliant in The Comeback. Click here for more info.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Anya Taylor-Joy joins the next Lord of the Rings film, The Hunt for Gollum, directed by Andy Serkis himself, who is also reprising the role of Gollum.
The film takes place right in between The Hobbit trilogy and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with Aragorn (Jamie Dornan) and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) searching for Gollum to learn more about Bilbo’s ring. Taylor-Joy will play Seren, a Sindar Elf of the Woodland realm and a lethal warrior of King Thranduil (Lee Pace).
Taylor-Joy’s last big live-action movie role was Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), where she played a younger version of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa. Taylor-Joy nailed the role of a silent yet lethal warrior. She proved that she can pull off action scenes in the Mad Max film and that she has intellectual charisma as a chess prodigy in the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. We think her portrayal of a dark elf will be a mixture of these two roles, a perfect fit for Taylor-Joy.
Tidbits:
Michael J. Fox will voice the lead in an upcoming animated feature, Dragoons, from Icon Creative Studios (Prod Co: Disney+’s Monsters at Work). The film will follow Dougie, an ordinary worker at WizCorp who is transformed into a mighty dragon, only to realize that his wizard CEO shrank them to build his empire. We’ve loved Fox as he voiced a fast-talking anthropomorphic mouse in the Stuart Little franchise and are excited to see the energetic charm he will bring to a dragon.
HBO’s Harry Potter series adds an unexpected cast member. English actor Peter Serafinowicz (Guardians of the Galaxy) will take on the cheeky Peeves the Poltergeist, a fan-favorite character from the books that never appeared in the original movies. Unlike his level-headed Shaun of the Dead (2004) character, one of the film’s few voices of reason, Peeves thrives on chaos, mischief, and causing ghostly trouble in the Hogwarts halls. Season one will premiere on HBO this December.
Mini Tidbits:
Kumail Nanjiani (Eternals), Pamela Adlon (Californication), and BD Wong (Jurassic Park franchise) join the cast of Prime Video’s Sex Criminals. Based on the comic book of the same name, the show will follow Suze (Imogen Poots) and Jon (John Reynolds), who can stop time when they are having sex.
Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building Season 6’s cast just got more star-studded. David Tennant (Doctor Who), Nicola Coughlan (Derry Girls), Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who), and Jim Broadbent (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) join the show in recurring guest roles. The original stars, Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, will return as well.
The upcoming Russell Crowe-led action film The Last Druid casts the Gladiator actor’s son, Tennyson (The Billion Dollar Spy), in his second acting role. The film will follow a Celtic elder who is forced to defend his people when the Roman Empire threatens their way of life. Production is ongoing in Spain.
Emmy winner Alex Borstein (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) is joining the family dramedy Turn the Lights Back On, inspired by real events families faced during the Covid era. Borstein will take on an exhausted elementary school teacher grappling with difficult family dynamics as the world begins to shut down.
Mini Mini Tidbits:
Claudia Black (Pitch Black), who played Mother Klothow in Disney+’s Ahsoka, will not return for Season 2.
Mark Hamill joins Peacock’s video game TV adaptation Twisted Metal Season 3 as Sweet Tooth’s father.
Anne Schedeen, the actress best known for her role in NBC’s sitcom ALF, passed away at 77.
After 12 years, Lisa Kudrow is zany in The Comeback. Click here for more info.
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
The Academy has elected eight-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker Guillermo del Toro to the Board of Governors, set to represent the Directors Branch. Bad Robot composer Kris Bowers will lead the Music Branch, and Fred Berger (La La Land) will lead the Producers Branch.
Fremantle (Prod Co: Family Feud) and Bell Media (Prod Co: Orphan Black) are adapting Robyn Carr’s Thunder Point series for TV. They have previously found huge success with Canadian romantic drama series Sullivan’s Crossing (trailer), another series adapted from Carr with more than 600,000 same-day viewers per episode.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Rod Blackhurst (Dir: Shudder’s Dolly) is adapting his viral short film Alone Time (full short) into a feature film. The original short follows a young woman who is haunted by an unseen figure in the Adirondack Mountains, only to realize that the greatest threat was lurking within her own psyche. It garnered more than 8M views across many online platforms. Witchcraft Motion Picture Company (Prod Co: Blood for Dust starring Kit Harington) will produce the film.
Alone Time is by no means a jump scare horror film. Instead, the original short’s horror sneaks up on its audience – the last few seconds of the film entirely change what the 11-minute film means. This type of psychological horror is exactly what many horror audiences are looking for, and the original short has enough room to make the viewers wonder what will happen next.
Grasshopper Films (Dist: Albert Serra’s Afternoons of Solitude, Nocturnes) picks up North American rights on Zi, the 2026 Sundance film from Kogonada (dir: After Yang, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey).
Synopsis:
In Hong Kong, a young woman haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who changes the course of her night — and possibly her life.
Look, truth be told, I wasn’t the biggest fan of After Yang. It brought a humanism to the sci-fi concept of robot replacement that was conceptually interesting but lacked oomph. I’m hoping this one is more stirring.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Studiocanal is nearing a presale for a new animated Paddington film, which will be released alongside the upcoming fourth installment of the live-action franchise. Studiocanal has also locked down multiple deals for their new slate of films (CinemaCon breakdown), including Violette (dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet), sold to 20 territories, and Everybody Wants to F*ck Me (star: Taron Egerton) sold to Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Matiss Kaza (Prod: Academy Award-winning animated feature Flow) joins Ukrainian film Times New Roman. It will follow a Ukrainian artist, Roman, who is battling alcohol addiction while wrestling with the emotional strain of the war.
ON THIS DAY
1960. Psycho opens in New York City.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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