Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Robert Redford RIP, Paul Feig’s new direction, and an accident.
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“I can't swim.”
Robert Redford's iconic line in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) will always be, for me, one of the most resonant words ever spoken in cinema.
Redford begrudgingly offers this confession to Paul Newman moments before they plunge into a river. Watching the film at a young age, I saw Redford as a role model for a man who could overcome his fears, both rational and irrational, in a single bound.
Redford, who passed away yesterday at 89, held onto this doctrine deeply, both on and off screen. For half a century, he shaped both Hollywood and independent cinema.
His career spanned iconic leading roles, like men of virtue battling shady institutions, like Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men (1976, scene), or as the vulnerable CIA agent mixed up with dark forces in Three Days of the Condor (1975, trailer). Or as a sturdy outlaw like in Butch Cassidy and The Sting (1973, scene).
But through every on-screen performance, Redford brought a charm, a quiet affability, and a supreme and sturdy confidence writ large across his face. He anchored every performance as an everyman who could do everything.
Redford was also a formidable director, behind the Oscar Best Picture winner Ordinary People (1980) and my personal favorite Quiz Show (1994).
But then Hollywood cinema gave way to an auteur generation of films like Coppola’s The Godfather and Apocalypse Now (both of which Redford was suggested for by studio executives). But instead of joining, he left Hollywood to found the Sundance Institute in 1981. Soon, this would blossom into the Sundance Film Festival, which helped birth the indie film movement in the US. The labs and the festival offered a springboard for some of cinema's most iconic voices, like Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Darren Aronofsky, and, more recently, Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao.
Redford’s legacy is him standing up on that cliff, a bandit being chased by the institution of old Hollywood. And deciding to jump. And boy, could he swim.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Emmy wins fuel viewing spikes.
Paramount’s Worldwide Marketing & Distribution president exits.
Hasbro Entertainment chief Olivier Dumont steps down.
Disney finalizes a partnership with Webtoon.
Shari Redstone becomes chair of prod co Sipur (Dead Man’s Wire).
Renewed: Apple TV+’s The Morning Show (S5).
Ozark bad guy Esai Morales will show a softer side in Coyote.
Teresa Palmer boards Amazon MGM’s sub thriller Subversion.
A24’s October adds Young Mazino & Stephen Root.
Disney, Universal & WBD sue AI firm MiniMax.
Oscilloscope buys Sundance’s Mad Bills to Pay.
Greenwich & Kanopy take US rights for Reading Lolita in Tehran.
Anna Smith Tenser joins Maven Screen Media as CCO.
Rebecca Rajadnya wraps Rest & Relaxation, EP’d by Ilana Glazer.
HBO Max expands to 14 more Asia Pacific markets.
Iran, Israel, and Colombia unveil Oscar submissions.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Emmys wins drive viewership spikes. See the above chart for increases for Sept 15th (post Emmys win week).
Not surprisingly, this viewership increase happens with the Oscars. Here’s our deep dive on that box office phenomenon for Best Picture winners: https://theindustry.co/p/anora-jumps-595
Marc Weinstock, Paramount’s President, Worldwide Marketing and Distribution, is leaving the company. This is happening amidst the David Ellison reshuffle of executives.
Weinstock’s resume is impressive:
Paramount (2019-2025)
Top Gun: Maverick
A Quiet Place
Annapurna, President (2016-2018)
20th Century Fox, President of Domestic Marketing (2014 -2016)
The Revenant
The Martian
Sony Pictures, President of Worldwide Theatrical Marketing (2009 - 2013)
Josh Goldstine, ex-WB marketing chief, is in talks to take his place at Paramount.
Tidbit:
Hasbro Entertainment president Olivier Dumont has stepped down after two years. Dumont was responsible for building beloved IPs like Peppa Pig, PJ Masks, Transformers, and My Little Pony, among others. He will be succeeded by Hasbro 20-year veteran Kim Boyd, now president of licensing and entertainment. Maybe this shuffle will help bring in new ideas and spin gold like Mattel.
Mini Tidbit:
Shari Redstone, hot off her sale of Paramount, is chairing Sipur (prod co: Dead Man’s Wire, Oh, Canada). You might recognize the name of the other chairman of the company, Gideon Tadmor of Tadmor Productions (Swiss Army Man, Norman).
Disney finalizes its partnership with digital comic mecca Webtoon on a 35,000+ title comics platform. This is another step towards a Disney-based anime arm. They have already dipped their toes with Star Wars: Visions (clip). But this feels like testing the waters for a very lucrative new venture for the mouse.
Paramount, a Skydance Company, is paying Timothée Chalamet $25M to star in James Mangold’s (dir: A Complete Unknown) newest film, High Side. Project breakdown: https://theindustry.co/p/timothee-chalamet-and-a-motorcycle
Former CBS Studios drama development head Julie McNamara is back. The exec has joined the CBS-based Sutton St. Productions (CBS’ Good Sam) founded by producer Jennie Snyder Urman (Matlock creator) to develop new series.
It’s not just you; theaters are getting nicer. $1.5bn has been invested in North American theaters in the past 12 months. Read the full (very graphics-friendly) report here.
Amy Blanc Lacy, a script supervisor, has passed away at 62. Lacy had recently hit a stride in her career, working on two high-profile AMC shows back to back, Halt and Catch Fire and 137 episodes of The Walking Dead (2011–2020).
Renewals:
Apple TV+’s The Morning Show (for Season 5)
Release dates:
Prime’s Allen Iv3rson (3-part doc)
Release: Oct 23
Universal’s Other Mommy
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass
Release Pushed: May 8, 2026 → Oct 9, 2026
Prod Co: Atomic Monster (The Monkey, The Conjuring)
Trailers:
Hulu’s Stay
Release: Oct 8
Netflix’s Billionaires Bunker
Creator: Alex Pina (Money Heist)
Release: Sept 19
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Esai Morales, who recently co-starred as the delectable AI-obsessed villain in the latest Mission Impossible movies, is booking a bunch of roles:
Coyote
Role: An ex-smuggler
War Machine
Sci-fi action starring Dennis Quaid
Role: Commanding officer
So Much For Love
Romantic Comedy
Producer: Cassian Elwes (Dallas Buyers Club)
Coyote synopsis:
An ex-smuggler (Morales) aids a mother and daughter through perilous borderlands, drawing heat from traffickers and law enforcement.
This may give us the softer side of Morales, who was perfectly sinister in the opening of Ozark. In fact, he initiates the entire action of the series by causing Marty to think for his life. The clip is wild. But watch how Morales’ face doesn’t move an inch. His unreactiveness is just blissfully haunting.
Casting Tidbits:
Teresa Palmer
Tyrese Gibson
Sam Corlett
Ella Travolta
Young Mazino
Stephen Root
For all the above casting tidbits and more click here.
One of the 1930s' busiest child actresses, Marilyn Knowlden, has passed at 99. Despite having a career just a little over a decade, the actress starred in over a dozen films, six of which were Best Picture nominees, including Little Women (1933), George Cukor’s David Copperfield (1935), and the historical epic Anthony Adverse (1936).
TECH SECTION
Walt Disney, Comcast's Universal, and Warner Bros. Discovery sue another AI company. After their lawsuit against Midjourney, they’ve also taken a Chinese AI company, MiniMax (value: $4bn), to court. The lawsuit alleges:
“MiniMax markets Hailuo AI as a “Hollywood studio in your pocket” – an audacious self-anointed nickname given that MiniMax built its business from intellectual property stolen from Hollywood studios like Plaintiffs. The Hailuo service offers its subscribers an endless supply of infringing images and videos featuring Plaintiffs’ famous copyrighted characters.”
Full lawsuit here.
At the same time, Paramount is adding the CFO of an AI company to its board. Dennis Cinelli, who serves as CFO of Scale AI, will become Paramount’s 11th board member.
It all tracks with David Ellison’s vision of becoming a company driven by tech.
If you look through Scale’s website, they’re across so many sectors it’s hard to know if Cinelli will be advising on how to fast-track script development using LLMs or just help with something more innocuous like large-scale library labeling.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Paul Feig’s films have mastered the art of portraying fraught female relationships. While Feig’s early work leaned comedic like Bridesmaids (2011), Spy (2015), and Ghostbusters (2016), his latest movies are moving towards the macabre.
His latest is Lionsgate’s The Housemaid, which centers on Sydney Sweeney as a housemaid who gets suckered into working in the unstable home of an elite couple, Amanda Seyfried and Brandon Sklenar. In the trailer, there’s a psychological horror element almost bordering on the supernatural. There’s an angularity to Seyfried’s twisted expressions that pairs well with the canted cinematography.
It all builds on Feig’s A Simple Favor (2018), the twisted female-led murder mystery, continuing his fascination with complex female relationships entangled in deception, power, and psychological games.
Release date December 19th.
Another festival buy! Ok, it’s not from TIFF. But I’m glad to see that Sundance 2025 titles are still being sold. Oscilloscope picks up Sundance’s Mad Bills to Pay with Christine Vachon’s Killer Films serving as EPs.
Synopsis:
Summer in The Bronx. He sells "nutcracker" cocktails, gets high, stays moving. Then she moves in. Two kids in a cramped apartment, playing house until the city reminds them how fast the streets make you grow up.
The film won Sundance’s NEXT Special Jury Award for ensemble cast. Releasing in theaters next year.
First-time filmmaker Rebecca Rajadnya has wrapped production on Rest & Relaxation, a coming-of-age drama she directed from her own script. There is a powerful team of EPs that made it happen, including Ilana Glazer (Broad City).
Logline:
A woman on the brink of a life-changing decision retreats to a secluded bed and breakfast, where unexpected guests challenge her notions of family and force her to face her future.
It’s heartening that big names are still willing to give new talent a chance.
Tidbits:
Reading Lolita in Tehran has been picked up by Greenwich and Kanopy. The film follows a group of women who decide to protest their country’s crackdown against knowledge by reading Nabokov’s Lolita. The trailer shows off a well-shot and tense film. Releasing in the US spring 2026 and then available on Kanopy.
Anna Smith Tenser is a Maven. She will join Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray’s Maven Screen Media (& Sons, Golda) as Chief Content Officer. She previously served at Steve McQueen’s Lammas Park, where she produced Occupied City (2023) and EP’d Apple TV+’s Blitz.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Iran has chosen Cause of Death: Unknown (trailer) as their selection for the 98th Academy Awards. Premiering at the 2023 Shanghai Film Festival, it follows a group of strangers traveling through Iran’s Lut Desert who are faced with an ethical dilemma.
The film was notably picked over the Palme d’Or-winning film It Was Just an Accident from director Jafar Panahi (which Neon acquired at Cannes). That’s because Iran has sentenced Panahi to prison for 6 years. Iran is a hostile environment for artists. Last year, the director of The Seed and the Sacred Fig fled Iran to go to Cannes.
Israel’s selection is The Sea, a moving drama that won the Best Picture and Best Screenplay at the Ophir Awards, the Israeli equivalent of the Oscars.
Colombia’s pick for the International Oscar category is A Poet (trailer) from director Simón Mesa Soto (Amparo). The jury prize winner at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section, A Poet is a dark comedy about a failed writer’s new mentorship.
The 98th Academy Awards will be held on March 15th, 2026.
This October, HBO Max will add…
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