Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Universal’s Fault, MGM’s Widow, and a Boy Who Runs.
Let’s go!
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THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Megan Gallagher signs an overall deal with Universal Global Television.
MGM TV is developing Scott Moore’s debut novel The Mad Widows as a series.
Warner Bros. production assistants ratify their first union contracts.
Sony Pictures Entertainment invests $100M in Cosm.
HBO Max greenlights Adventure Time: Bubblegum & Marceline.
Jack Quaid joins Invincible Season 5 as Gravitator/Chris.
Asa Butterfield will play Brian Epstein in Beatles drama Hamburg Days.
Kino Lorber takes U.S. rights to Cannes title The Meltdown.
CJ Obasi will direct Julius Achon biopic The Boy Who Runs.
Jia Zhangke’s Unknown Pleasures Pics acquire Chinese rights to Minotaur.
The Other Bennet Sister returns to BritBox and the BBC for a 3-episode special.
Yesterday’s correct answer: Liz the Lizard, Magic School Bus sidekick.
86% got it correct.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Megan Gallagher, the creator behind Peacock’s hit miniseries All Her Fault, has signed an official overall deal with Universal Global Television, including a first-look pact with Carnival Films. After the global success of the Sarah Snook-led kidnapping drama, Gallagher is already in development with UGT and Carnival on two more book adaptations. Another from All Her Fault author Andrea Mara, Such a Nice Girl, and Katherine Faulkner’s novel The Break-In, which was recently given a series order.
Such a Nice Girl falls along similar themes of All Her Fault, with a high-intensity, twisting psychological plot that leans true crime but is really about nefarious family mental and physical warfare.
The Hangover screenwriter Scott Moore’s debut novel, The Mad Widows, is headed to MGM Television in development as a potential series. The novel follows a new friend group of grieving women when one discovers her late husband may not actually be dead, launching them into a thrilling reverse murder mystery to discover the truth. Moore knows his way around a group of women with an axe to grind with their husbands, having written and directed both Bad Moms (2016) and its sequel, A Bad Moms Christmas (2017).
Mini Tidbits:
A win for Hollywood’s unsung workforce. Production assistants on Warner Bros. shows like Abbott Elementary, The Pitt, and Georgie & Mandy have ratified their first union contracts, securing raises and workplace protections.
Sony Pictures Entertainment invests $100M in global technology and media company Cosm.
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace VFX producer Jeff Olson has died at 77. From Roger Rabbit to the original Star Trek films, the longtime modelmaker was a pioneer.
Greenlit:
HBO Max’s Adventure Time: Bubblegum & Marceline
From showrunner Adam Muto (Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake)
Renewals:
Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch (for S2)
Cast: Kelly Reilly, Cole Hauser
Investigation Discovery’s Hollywood Demons (for S3)
Trailers:
Adult Swim’s President Curtis (Rick and Morty spinoff)
Release: Jul 26
Hulu’s King of the Hill (S15)
Release: Jul 20
Release Dates:
Neon’s Fjord
Cast: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve
Release: Oct. 9
The Palme d’Or winner follows in the footsteps of Neon’s past three Cannes winners, Parasite (2019), Anatomy of a Fall (2023), and Anora (2024), each released on Oct. 9.
Netflix’s La Bola Negra
Dir(s): Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (tied for Best Director prize at Cannes)
Theatrical Release: Nov. 6
Netflix Release: Dec. 4
Netflix’s Ray Gunn
Dir: Brad Bird (The Incredibles)
Release: Dec. 18
FX’s The Drop: A Snowfall Saga
Cast: Gail Bean, Isaiah John
Release: Sept. 8
Netflix’s My Life With the Walter Boys (S3)
Release: Aug. 6
Eli Roth’s The Horror Section’s Stiletto
Release: Oct. 30
NBC Fall Releases:
The Traitors: New Blood
Release: Sept 17
Chicago Med (S12), Chicago Fire (S15), and Chicago P.D. (S14)
Release: Oct. 7
Law & Order: SVU (S28)
Release: Oct. 8
Reba McEntire led Happy’s Place (S3)
Release: Oct. 23
St. Denis Medical (S3)
Release: Nov. 2
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (S2)
Release: Nov. 2
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
From one superhero show to the next. Jack Quaid will lend his voice to Prime Video’s Invincible for its fifth season.
Quaid will play Gravitator/Chris, a prodigal engineer who uses his skills for thievery before a surprise encounter with Invincible turns his life around. The casting comes shortly after the series finale of Prime Video’s other super hit, The Boys, where Quaid spent five seasons playing Hughie Campbell, the everyman caught in a violent world of fame-hungry, corrupt superheroes.
Quaid has also built up quite a book of voice acting roles in:
My Adventures With Superman - as Superman
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) - as an alt Peter Parker
Batman: The Long Halloween Part One - as Alberto Falcone
Quaid has a blinding energy that allows him to mold his voice into all sorts of valiant or deviant personas.
Ahead of its fifth season, Invincible scored an early season six renewal, becoming the streamer’s longest animated series to date.
Asa Butterfield is heading to Hamburg. The fan favorite Sex Education star has been cast in the Beatles drama Hamburg Days, a six-part series exploring the band’s formative years in Germany before their worldwide stardom.
Butterfield will play the band’s “irreplaceable fifth member,” manager Brian Epstein, whose ambition and belief in the group transformed four scrappy musicians into some of the world’s most famous musicians.
The role marks quite the departure from Butterfield’s usual awkward teenagers and shy heroes, including his recent tear-jerker performance in Our Hero, Balthazar, where he played a crazed, confused teen looking for friendship but tapping into an inner fury.
We welcome seeing his post-Ender’s Game resurgence.
The series will be filmed all throughout Munich and Liverpool.
Mini Tidbits:
Jonathan Banks (Mike in Breaking Bad) joins indie family drama feature Words From The Oven. Based on a true story, the film follows a Lebanese immigrant family in rural America during the mid-20th century as a young man takes over a family farm after a family loss. Josie Hull (Cookbook For Southern Housewives) is writing and directing the film.
The Daniels’ (Dirs: Everything Everywhere All At Once) untitled new film adds Sean Kaufman (The Summer I Turned Pretty), Silvia Dionicio (Task), Jackson Kelly (The Pitt), Kerrice Brooks (Star Trek: Starfleet Academy), and Thalia Dudek (The Running Man) to their cast.
Natalie Burn (Til Death Do Us Part) stars in cartel action-thriller Dead Weight. The film follows a pregnant woman (Burn) trying to escape the cartel after getting trapped in the Guatemalan wilderness.
Prime Video’s adaptation of the cult-favorite comic Sex Criminals has added to its ensemble. Ayden Mayeri (Mr. Throwback) and Ashleigh Cummings (Amazon’s Citadel) will join Imogen Poots in the comedy from Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick).
FESTIVALS AND DOCS
Berlin-based sales outfit Pluto Film (How I Learned to Fly) has acquired Chica Checa, a comedy feature ahead of its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary Premiere next month. A film about reinvention, it follows a widow navigating her new life after discovering her beloved son makes his living as a drag queen, Chica Checa (“Czech girl”), never expecting the revelation to bring them even closer together.
Annecy winning director Upamanyu Bhattacharyya’s (Wade) debut feature film Heirloom secures a significant grant from Aide aux Cinémas du Monde. From Condor Films, the animated family fantasy co-production has been in the works for over six years, centered on a young businessman devoted to preserving his family’s legacy as his wife begins to slowly die of a hereditary disease.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
Kino Lorber (Distribution: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth) takes U.S. rights to Cannes film The Meltdown, directed by Manuela Martelli (Dir: Chile ‘76). The Chilean film follows the disappearance of a German teenager in an Andean ski resort, just two years after the end of dictator Pinochet’s regime. The film had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
CJ Obasi (Dir: Mami Wata, winner of Special Jury Prize at Sundance) is making a biopic, The Boy Who Runs, based on the life of Ugandan athlete Julius Achon. Based on the book The Boy Who Runs: The Odyssey of Julius Achon, the film will follow Achon’s journey from being abducted by an extremist army to becoming an elite athlete in America.
Haven’t seen Mami Wata? It was Nigeria’s submission to the 2023 Oscars and Sundance World Cinema cinematography winner, which centers on the mermaid goddess of West Africa.
The high-contrast ritualistic trailer is stark and alluring. The film is inspired by West African mermaid folklore. And a big win for African Filmmaking
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Jia Zhangke’s (Dir: Cannes Best Screenplay winner A Touch of Sin) production company Unknown Pleasures Pictures acquires Chinese distribution rights to two Cannes award-winning films: Minotaur and La Gradiva. Minotaur won the Grand Prix in Cannes main competition, and La Gradiva took home the AMI Paris Grand Prize at the Cannes Critics’ Week.
Minotaur is being distributed by Mubi in the US and is sensational.
Ludovic Attal exits Amazon MGM to become President at Israel’s Sipur (Prod Co: Emmy-winning documentary We Will Dance Again). Attal was previously running brand partnerships for Amazon MGM.
Charlotte Toledano Detaille (Prod: Prime Video’s Escort Boys) launches independent banner Alyx Films. They will kick off their slate with an exclusive partnership with Geronimo (Creator of viral series The Book Club).
Ramesh Mundhra is leaving JioStar (India’s largest entertainment conglomerate) after 18 years of working at the company. Mundhra will take the role of Head – Business Affairs, Strategy and Operations at Abundantia Entertainment (Prod Co: Prime Video’s Subedaar).
An early Christmas gift for Pride & Prejudice fans. Spinoff series, The Other Bennet Sister, is making a return to BritBox and the BBC for a three-episode special with series writer Sarah Quintrell and series director Asim Abbasi returning. Shooting will begin this summer in Wales.
ON THIS DAY
1982. Blade Runner is released.
Written by Gabriel Miller, Madelyn Menapace, and Tony Jaeyeong Jeong.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
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