Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
Richard Gadd, Tom Hanks, and Nicolas Cage.
Let’s go!
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Emmy winner Richard Gadd (Baby Reindeer) returns with HBO’s Half Man, which he created, wrote, and stars in.
It’s a masterwork of a TV series about not being whole.
Richard Gadd plays a hyper-macho brute who must control everything around him with his violence and sexuality. There’s an addictive quality to his essence, and Gadd created a wild vocal transformation, dropping his voice by many octaves.
The beauty of the series is when Gadd finds freedom in confessing his dark truth.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
LA report estimates the PSKY–WBD merger will cost $2.78bn w/ 4,500 jobs lost.
Universal picks up time-travel novel Paradox Inc., with Daniel Roher directing.
Warner Bros. is in talks for bestseller Theo of Golden, w/ Tom Hanks in lead role.
Universal Global TV develops E.L. Westbury’s Drowning in Paper Flowers.
Netflix acquires Sundance drama The Disciple, produced by Vanessa Kirby.
Untitled Entertainment promotes six managers to partner.
Big Little Lies creator David E. Kelley EPs live nature series Live Migrations.
Neon’s 4 X 4: The Event casts Jaden Smith and Jacob Tremblay.
Juno Temple leads relationship rom-com Intimacy Party.
Apple TV+’s Murderbot S2 adds Steve Buscemi, Wanda Sykes, and Nicolas Braun.
Nicolas Cage survival thriller Parish heads to TIFF Market.
Variance picks up Kyra Sedgwick & Kevin Bacon SXSW horror com Family Movie.
The Czech Republic selects If Pigeons Turned to Gold for Academy Awards.
Yesterday’s highest-voted answer: Sean Connery for favorite 007.
49% agreed.
Richard Gadd gives an addictive performance - click here for more info
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Grab your calculators and count to negative $2.8bn. That’s the amount of negative economic impact of the PSKY-WBD merger, according to a new report prepared by the Department of Economic Opportunity in LA.
This puts a big cloud over David Ellison’s dreamy proposal that his merger is the cure to all of Hollywood’s ills, something it seems increasingly like the DGA, IATSE, and the cinema guild are aligned with.
If this report is to be trusted, the merger could do major damage over three years:
10,360 lost job-years
4,500 film/TV jobs eliminated in LA
$1.26bn in lost wages
$2.78bn lost in economic value
$4.06bn in business output lost
The nail in the coffin from the report: PSKY-WBD may be promising 30 films/year and $30bn/year in content investment. But last year the two studios made a combined 19 films, only one of which was shot primarily in CA. Full report here.
Warner Bros. is in talks to pick up NY Times #1 Bestseller Theo of Golden, which sold a massive 3.5M copies. Tom Hanks is in talks to star as Theo, a do-gooder whose local coffee shop has 92 portraits of people in his town of Golden. Theo’s mission: reunite each person w/ their portrait, creating life-altering friendships along the way. Wow, does that sound like a Hanks character or what? He’s known for making unlikely, serendipitous friendships in The Terminal, Cast Away, and even his recent A Man Called Otto. Gil Netter (Life of Pi) will produce.
Side note: in the first edition of our recently launched IP newsletter, The IP Scout, we reported on Theo of Golden. At that time, several parties were in negotiations for the rights. We’re glad there’s been progress. Read the first edition of The IP Scout here: https://theindustry.co/p/the-ip-scout-723
Tidbit:
Universal doubles down on the EEAAO filmmakers. Universal has picked up the novel Paradox Inc., which will be produced by Lord Miller (prod co: Project Hail Mary) and directed/co-written by Oscar-winner Daniel Roher (Navalny). If that seems like an impressive leap, Roher is a bit of a magician. He directed a killer first narrative feature, Tuner (our interview with him). Roher also teamed up with The Daniels (whose next film is with Universal) on a Focus Features AI doc. Paradox Inc. follows a startup and a Big Tech company racing to build the first consumer time machine.
Recently released novel Drowning in Paper Flowers is getting the TV treatment from The Handmaid’s Tale producer Marissa Jo Cerar, Jenna Hager’s Thousand Voices (Line of Fire), and Universal Global Television. From author E.L. Westbury, the story follows a middle-aged Dallas housewife who, despite her near-perfect outward appearance, is drowning in the dissatisfaction in her marriage, her inadequacy as a mother, and the trauma she still suffers from her childhood.
Before crime dramas, there was salmon. Big Little Lies creator David E. Kelley has quietly become a nature documentarian set to EP Live Migrations, a live footage doc headed to its own YouTube channel. Premiering this week, the series will follow animal migrations through live footage beginning with salmon in Alaska, The Great Sockeye Migration.
Mini Tidbits:
Netflix picks up the Vanessa Kirby-produced The Disciple (premiere: Sundance), about an outsider fueled to work his way into the inner circle of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Untitled Entertainment promotes six to partner, including Ashley Josephson (clients: Marisa Tomei, Jessica Alba, Tessa Thompson) and Scott Metzger (clients: Demi Moore, Zoë Kravitz).
Nielsen is diving into AI to make its ratings more accurate. Starting Sept 1st, it’ll have new ratings for TV, co-viewing, and Hispanic audience measurement.
The Odyssey hits $1.34bn WW, surpassing Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) and reaching the status of the biggest R-rated film of all time.
Renewals/Spinoffs:
FX’s Legends (Sons of Anarchy spinoff)
Meta-thriller spinoff where the actors will be playing fictionalized versions of themselves
Netflix’s Outer Banks (prequel series)
Set 20 years before the OG series
Hulu’s Good American Family (for S2)
Case: Lorena Bobbitt
Trailers:
A24’s Club Kid
20th Century’s Whalefall
Cast: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin
Release: Oct 16
Laika Studios’ Wildwood
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali
Release: Oct 23
Magenta Light Studios’ California Schemin’
Dir/Co-star: James McAvoy
Netflix’s Earle Meets World
First look:
Apple TV’s Bad Monkey (S2)
Star: Vince Vaughn
Release: Dec 2
Release date:
Amazon MGM Studios’ Kill Jackie
Cast: Catherine Zeta-Jones
AMC+ release: Oct 2
Richard Gadd is hiding a dark truth - click here for more info
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Neon’s 4 X 4: The Event from director Alex Ullom (Neon’s It Ends) casts Jaden Smith and Jacob Tremblay. Battle Royale meets Saw, the horror follows eight contestants in the most terrifying Gen Z livestream you’ve ever seen, who must kill or be killed using only what they can order online. Tremblay recently flipped from a cute little kid in Room to a terrifying killer in- well, I can’t tell you which movie, as it’s a spoiler. But let me just say, Tremblay has the chops to go very violent.
Juno Temple (Ted Lasso) is going from TV dramedy to feature rom-com, set to lead the cast of Intimacy Party. The actor’s first real foray into the romance genre, the film follows a woman (Temple) determined to save her relationship by recreating the party where she first met her fiancé, only to discover she fell for the wrong guest. Temple can currently be seen reprising her role as the high-strung Keeley in Apple’s Ted Lasso S4.
Mini Tidbits:
Former SNL-er Jane Curtin is set to play a dean/mentor in Anne Hathaway’s Somewhere Pictures sports drama Little Five. The true story follows a group of female student athletes who fought to create a women’s version of Indiana University’s iconic Little 500 bicycle race.
Apple TV+’s Murderbot S2 adds Steve Buscemi, Tramell Tillman (Severance), Wanda Sykes, Nicolas Braun, Patton Oswalt and Michael Sheen as guest stars. The series focuses on Alexander Skarsgård as a confused, self-aware robot.
French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color) secures a spot opposite Zoë Kravitz in Apple’s new mystery movie from My Old Ass helmer Megan Park.
Richard Gadd gives an addictive performance - click here for more info
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
From Longlegs to vicious cannibals, Nicolas Cage’s next starring role is headed to the TIFF Market.
Parish
Cast: Nicolas Cage
Int. Sales Rep: Concourse Media (Sovereign)
Dir/Wri: Adam Sigal (Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose)
Synopsis:
A hardened survivor who has managed to stay alive with his highly trained attack dogs by following one unbreakable rule: never let anyone through the gate. The rule has kept him alive for three decades. But when a desperate woman carrying an infant appears outside his sanctuary, Parish is forced to choose between compassion and survival.
The TIFF Market will run from Sept. 10 to Sept. 16.
Mini Tidbit:
Fatih Akin’s (dir: Kino Lorber’s Amrum starring Diane Kruger) new film Ghost Song is opening the San Sebastian Film Festival.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Variance picks up SXSW’s horror comedy Family Movie from golden couple Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, starring alongside their children, Travis and Sophie Bacon.
Synopsis:
A filmmaking family finds themselves in a real-life horror movie when a body turns up on the set of their low-budget slasher, forcing them to cover up the murder to keep filming.
When I was at SXSW, I didn’t get to catch this, but when I rolled into the afterparty, everyone was genuinely loving it, so I expect this to be fun.
Releasing April 23rd, 2027. First look here.
Tidbits:
From Ronald Reagan to amnesiac. Sean McNamara (dir: Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid) has a new film on the horizon, Blank Canvas. Based on a memoir, it follows Marcy Gregg, a 30-year-old woman who, after a crazy childbirth, develops severe amnesia and fights her way back to sanity. Look, McNamara is kind of the king of these heartstrings movies; his 2011 Soul Surfer from TriStar was about a prodigy surfer who loses her arm in a shark attack, only to become an inspiration for thousands. We look forward to what he does with this. Seems like an easy pick-up for Angel Studios.
Indie horror novel Haunting Skies is getting an on-screen adaptation, with the author Christian Kang Bachini to direct the film. The film follows the battle between aliens and the devil when the extraterrestrial beings who rule the Earth abduct a young girl who has been possessed by Satan. With this outlandish setup, let’s see if Haunting Skies can raise hell on Earth… and beyond.
Brad Pitt EPs Wim Wenders’ Venice doc, From Inside Out: The Architecture of Peter Zumthor. It explores the influential contemporary architect, Pritzker Prize winner Peter Zumthor. The viewers experience the buildings as if they could walk around in them on their own. This is another 3D doc for Wenders post Pina. First look.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The Czech Republic has announced Pepa Lubojacki’s Berlin-premiering doc feature If Pigeons Turned to Gold (clip) as its official selection for the 99th Academy Awards. Told over the course of five years, the addiction doc follows the director’s brother and cousins as their lives are slowly destroyed by the disease.
Hulu acquires true-crime doc The Promise: Finding My Mother’s Killer from Banijay Rights. The three-part show follows an Iranian-American woman, Pooneh Entezari who spent more than 30 years hunting down her mother’s killer.
One of Netflix’s veteran international film execs, Sasha Bühler, is officially leaving the streamer. The All Quiet on the Western Front producer spent seven years as Director of Film for German-speaking Europe.
ON THIS DAY
1951. Rashomon wins the Golden Lion at Venice.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong (AI policy: AI is not used to generate our content).
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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