Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Will Ferrell’s Crime, Steven Spielberg’s Heist, and a Rental Family.
Let’s go!
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The Will Ferrell crime film is a subgenre:
Get Hard (2015)
Casa de Mi Padre (2012)
The Other Guys (2010)
Even Zoolander’s pièce de résistance is Ferrell’s manic world-leader assassinating villain.
Adding to this oeuvre is Amazon MGM’s upcoming Tough Guys.
Official Logline:
Fed up with being disposable, two henchmen (Ferrell and Ryan Gosling) break free from the criminal underworld and rewrite the rules as they abandon their ruthless boss and dodge the elite assassin on their trail.
Ferrell works so well as a criminal in all its various flavors because he excels at being either ferocious or timid. He can stretch the limits of both to their comedic highs, such as the scary psychopathic cult leader in Zoolander, or to their wimpy lows, such as the bumbling, whiny white-collar criminal in Get Hard (2015).
Films that can synthesize Ferrell’s range tend to be standouts like The Other Guys (2010), where he plays a sad, snarky, clueless, pencil-pushing cop who puts himself in the line of fire and rages against the criminal scum of NYC.
Tough Guys seems to supply the perfect setup for Ferrell to once again play across this range.
Although they didn’t share any screen time, Ferrell and Gosling recently co-starred in Barbie, with Ferrell again playing the Machiavellian Mattel CEO, hell bent on keeping Barbie in her box.
For More:
Ferrell gets coffee thrown at him in The Other Guys trailer.
Ferrell throws coffee at his assistant in the iconic Zoolander clip.
Get Hard trailer.
THE INDUSTRY TLDR
Lionsgate sells Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping to international distributors.
Amazon/MGM/Hasbro are in early development on a live-action My Little Pony movie.
FX orders two series: Cry Wolf and The Shards.
Netflix buys romcom spec I Don’t Know Who You Are Anymore.
Lionsgate will adapt The Things We Leave Unfinished.
First trailer: After the Hunt (dir: Luca Guadagnino) and Pixar’s Hoppers.
Diego Luna to lead prison siege thriller Eleven Days.
The Legend of Zelda movie casts its leads.
Lili Reinhart will star in Amazon’s The Love Hypothesis.
Wishful Thinking, a surreal romcom, stars Maya Hawke & Lewis Pullman.
TIFF 2025 unveils Gala & Special Presentations (Hamnet, Wake Up Dead Man).
Shudder acquires Mother of Flies.
Sky & ITV extend streaming/ad pact through 2026.
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
Lionsgate is good at partitioning itself and its properties to increase its value. They cleaved off Starz and got instant interest from Legendary.
Now they’ve sold off the international rights for Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping to a medley of international indie distributors, including Germany, France, Italy, and 11 other territories.
This was always the plan when they launched this $150-$200M budgeted project at the Cannes Market in May. There had been talk of Lionsgate making a big sale to Amazon or Sony but no dice.
They will split 50/50 with the various companies.
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Glenn Close, Jesse Plemons, McKenna Grace, Maya Hawke, Kieran Culkin, etc.
The dystopian prequel and fifth installment of the franchise will premiere Nov. 20th, 2026.
A certain demographic is probably thrilled: Congrats to the Bronies, you will finally get your movie.
Amazon, MGM Studios, and Hasbro Entertainment are developing the first-ever live-action My Little Pony movie, based on the magical horse toyline that inspired an unintended movement among unwashed 30-year-old men (doc on the phenomenon). The franchise has spawned numerous animated shows and films, but this is its first big live-action push.
Still in early development, the project lacks a creative team.
So this is probably something that Hasbro is pushing more than Amazon, but its fanbase is rabid and loyal… do what you gotta do, do it for the Bronies.
FX greenlights two series:
Oscar winners Olivia Colman and Brie Larson have joined forces to star in and EP Cry Wolf, a limited series. The psychological thriller follows a social worker (Colman) and a mother (Larson) thrust into crisis when the mother’s teenage daughter alleges abuse, and both women are pushed to their limits. From Sarah Treem (creator: The Affair).
FX is also moving forward with Ryan Murphy’s The Shards, a new series from 20th Television. Based on Bret Easton Ellis’ school thriller of the same name, the dark coming-of-age tale set in the 1980s announced actors Igby Rigney (The Fall of the House of Usher) and Homer Gere (The Agency) to be joining the cast alongside Bottoms’ Kaia Gerber.
Vecna is back, and so is everyone’s favorite gang of bike-riding, D&D-playing, life-saving kids in Netflix’s first trailer for the final season of the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things.
With Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) back in hiding and the anniversary of Will’s (Noah Schnapp) disappearance on the horizon, the full cast is united together for what looks like one final epic battle to save their town and the ones they love the most.
The action-packed trailer shows lots of demogorgons, a glimpse of new cast addition Linda Hamilton (The Terminator), explosions, and tears, with the highly anticipated final episodes dropping in three volumes:
Vol. 1 on Nov. 26th
Vol. 2 on Dec. 25th
Vol. 3 on Dec. 31st
Hawkins will never be the same.
Tidbits:
Fourth Wing author Rebecca Yarros’ romance novel The Things We Leave Unfinished is being optioned by Lionsgate to be adapted into a feature film. Unlike her popular fantasy series, this story follows a recently divorced young woman who uncovers secrets of the past that expose romances of the past and present. Between The Housemaid and the new Hunger Games film, Lionsgate has been loving the book-to-film adaptations with Yarros’ novel the newest addition.
In a tight bidding war, New Regency has scooped up the rights to the thriller short story They’re Still Here to adapt into a feature-length film. The heartbreaking story by Stephen Herman (wri: Black Box) follows a family struggling after a brutal home invasion. The Phantom Four (The First Omen) and Good Fear (Mulan) are attached to produce.
Netflix’s new romcom, Just Picture It, is led by two of Hollywood’s most in-demand young actors: Stranger Things’ Millie Bobby Brown and The Fabelmans’ Gabriel LaBelle. From The Age of Adaline director Lee Toland Krieger, the script follows two college students who, despite never having met, start seeing pictures of themselves together, happily married with kids. Brown and LaBelle have yet to work within the romance genre, making this feature one to look out for.
I know who Matt Lawton is now. Lawton just sold a spec script to Netflix, I Don’t Know Who You Are Anymore. The genre: Rom-Com. Lawton has no feature writing credits, but he co-wrote 1 ep of Community and 4 eps of NBC’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The latter track, as one of the comps for this project, also stars Andy Samberg: Palm Springs. The other is The Family Man (2000).
Mini Tidbits:
From The Tinder Swindler to a Diamond Heist. RAW, the prod co behind everyone’s favorite nightmare dating scenario doc The Tinder Swindler, and Spielberg’s Amblin are making Stolen: Heist of the Century. It’s a wild doc about a diamond heist in Antwerp, Berlin, that scooped up half a billion dollars in precious stones. On Netflix August 8th.
Six months ago, when Simon Pegg's film Angels In the Asylum paused filming due to loss of funding, we now know a bit more about the damage: £3.7M (around $5M) owed to cast, crew, and suppliers; administrators now seek new funding to resume production. But it's not looking good; they may need more than an angel.
Avatar but with Beavers: Pixar's Hoppers looks like a fun time, a girl teams up with a couple scientists to put her brain into a synthetic beaver body where she uses her understanding of animal language to start messing with the food chain. That's pretty much the trailer, and it looks extremely promising already. In theaters March 2026.
Renewals:
AMC Networks’ The Walking Dead: Dead City (Season 3)
CW’s Sullivan’s Crossing (Season 4)
Poster:
James Gunn’s Supergirl
Trailers:
Amazon MGM’s After the Hunt
Dir: Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Queer)
Cast: Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield
Release date: Oct 10
FX’s Necaxa doc series
Cast: Eva Longoria, Rob Mac, Ryan Reynolds
Release date: Aug 7th
Music Box Films’ A Little Prayer
Cast: David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck)
Premiere: Sundance
Release date: Aug 29th
Canal+’s Moloch Files
Warner Bros.’ Mortal Kombat II
Star: Karl Urban
Release date: Oct 24th
Kino Lorber’s Riefenstahl
Premiere: Venice, Telluride
Want to see the Citizen Kane Rosebud sled sell for $14.75M? Watch this auction clip.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
Diego Luna will star as real-life prisoner Federico Carrasco in Eleven Days, a Texas-set thriller from director Peter Landesman (Concussion).
The film follows the 1974 Huntsville prison siege, where Carrasco held hostages in a failed escape.
Luna’s performance builds on a strong year, including acclaimed turns in Andor and La Máquina. While he made his debut in the incredible indie Y Tu Mama Tambien, he has previously talked about how from then until getting offered Cassian Andor in Rogue One, he was only offered drug dealer roles.
Things have changed for Diego Luna with Andor's season 2 critical acclaim and his week-long guest hosting stint on Jimmy Kimmel; the world, and especially the internet, have taken notice.
Though this role in Eleven Days may in some ways be returning to his life of crime, he does so willingly. The world now knows his versatility and talent; he can hold his head up high and no longer worry about being typecast.
The Legend Begins: Nintendo has announced its two leads for the Legend of Zelda live-action movie. Surprisingly, both are pretty young and fairly unknown.
20-year-old Bo Bragason (Three Girls) will play Zelda, the princess of Hyrule.
16-year-old Benjamin Evan Ainsworth (The Haunting of Bly Manor) will portray Link, the hero of time.
The pair was announced by first-look costume images shared on social media and a kind welcome by the head of Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto.
The resemblance is pretty spot on, especially Benjamin, dye that kid’s hair blonde and it's uncanny. First look.
The Legend of Zelda in theatres May 7th 2027.
Jack Lowden’s promotion, post demotion.
Lowden, who kicks off Apple TV+’s Slow Horses with a brutal demotion after bungling a terrorist training exercise, redeems himself in a new show from the streamer, Berlin Noir.
This Apple TV adaptation of Philip Kerr's novel features Lowden as a newly promoted officer in the Berlin Murder Squad. Writer: Peter Straughan (Conclave). Prod Co: Bad Wolf (Doctor Who). Prod Co: Tom Hanks’ Playtone (Masters of the Air, Band of Brothers).
Lowden’s normal register is timidness, that’s what makes his pushes for justice in Slow Horses so extraordinary to watch. We look forward to him in Berlin Noir.
Tom Shankland (Dir: Netflix’s The Leopard) will direct.
Tidbits:
Wishful Thinking, a surrealist relationship comedy, pits Lewis Pullman (Thunderbolts) and Maya Hawke (Do Revenge) against each other as a volatile couple who discover their complicated state has supernatural consequences. From Hawke’s time on the friendship-based, alien-infested Stranger Things to Pullman as Sentry, one of “Earth’s most powerful heroes” in Marvel’s Thunderbolts, both seem up to the task of balancing emotional realism with tense magical fiction in Wishful Thinking. The unconventional romcom is still in its very early stages.
Lili Reinhart knows a thing or two about love. The Hal & Harper actress has hopped on board to star and EP in The Love Hypothesis, an Amazon MGM adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s bestselling 2021 novel. Reinhart is playing a biology PhD candidate who enters into a fake relationship with a hotshot professor, both testing out their calculated theories on love.
Mini Tidbits:
Serial killer thriller The Edge of Normal casts Scott Haze (Jurassic World: Dominion) to join Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass) and Rupert Friend (The Phonecian Scheme). The nightmare XYZ Films’ (BlackBerry) feature has just wrapped production.
Michelle Monaghan cast as John Cena’s wife in Netflix’s comedy Little Brother. Cena plays a famous real estate agent whose world is upended when his eccentric “little brother” (Eric André) unexpectedly reappears.
FESTIVALS
TIFF announces 11 films for its Gala and Special Presentations sections.
These two categories are eligible for TIFF’s People’s Choice Awards. An important accolade that often determines Oscar Best Picture winners like 12 Years a Slave (Special Presentation) and Green Book (Gala Presentation).
TIFF 2025 Galas (and potential 2026 Oscar Winners):
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