Keanu Reeves’s triangle of madness

Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:

Keanu Reeves and an auteur director, The Office’, Molly Shannon SNL gossip, Ron Perlman’s bloody revenge, and a lot of beavers.

Let’s go!

KEANU REEVES’S TRIANGLE OF MADNESS

Keanu Reeves excels at being trapped.

His filmography is littered with characters ensnared in metaphysical (The Matrix series) or physical spaces (John Wick series).

Reeves is a brilliant physical performer with the fluidity of a dancer best displayed in maximalist action sequences. Reeves also exudes a humble plainness that allows him to anchor embodiments of the everyman, e.g., what makes the setups for The Matrix and John Wick so believable.

Reeves is ​in talks​ to star in Ruben Östlund’s new film, The Entertainment System is Down.

Over the years, Östlund has directed some of the most visceral foreign cinema that explores the hypocrisy of the rich stuck in disaster situations:

• ​Triangle of Sadness​ (2022)
  • Palme d’Or winner
• ​The Square​ (2017)
  • Palme d’Or winner
• ​Force Majeure​ (2014)
  • Cannes’ Jury Prize – Un Certain Regard

The Entertainment System Down revolves around a broken entertainment system on a transcontinental flight, creating psychological peril among the passengers.

Östlund elaborated:

If Reeves takes the part, it will be interesting to see how he navigates the airplane, which could either serve as both an epic arena for high-wire action or a psychological labyrinth akin to Nightmare At 30,000 Feet (1963).

The Entertainment System is Down will begin shooting in early 2025.

For More:

A fine dining banquet on a luxury cruise ship that’s subject to the forces a violent storm? Get a nightmarish vision of what being trapped is like in Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. Here’s the ​scene​, if you can stomach it.

A plane as a setting for intense action? Watch high-stakes negotiator Idris Elba navigate a hijacked plane in the Apple TV+ series Hijack (​trailer​).

In The Twilight Zone‘s, Nightmare at 30,000 Feet, watch a young William Shatner’s psychological rupture upon seeing a creature outside the wing of a plane. ​Clip​.

THE INDUSTRY NEWS

​Weekend Box Office. Here are the domestic grosses:

• $44.8 M Civil War (A24)
  • 2nd weekend
  • $50 M budget
  • Had the highest-grossing opening weekend for A24 film
  • ​​Trailer​​
• $10.2 M Abigail (Universal Pictures)
  • $28 M budget
  • Only studio horror for the next 3 weeks
  • ​Trailer​
• $9 M The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Lionsgate, domestic)
  • Underperformed
  • 3rd Guy Ritchie-directed film in a row to open below $10 M
  • $60 M budget
  • Will likely recoup because of the foreign pre-sales agreements with Amazon
  • ​Trailer​
• $566K Sasquatch Sunset (Bleecker Street)
  • 2nd week
  • 860 theaters
  • It’s a ​wildcard​, tracking 70% behind similarly toned odd-ball but lovable indie Swiss Army Man (2016)
  • ​Trailer​

IASTE The Motion Picture Costumers guild reach ​tentative agreements​ with AMPTP.

​To date, 11 of the 13 local guilds will present their members with terms for ratification.

​Here are the eleven: ​

• Local 705
  • Costumers
• Local 728
  • Electrical Lighting Technicians
• Local 892
  • Costume Designers Guild
• Local 700
  • Editors
• Local 871
  • Script supervisors and coordinators
  • Production Coordinators
  • Accountants
• Local 80
  • Grips
  • Crafts Service
• Local 706
  • Makeup Artists
  • Hairstyle
• Local 695
  • Production Sound
  • Video Engineers
• Local 600
  • Cinematographers
• Local 729
  • Set Painter
• Local 800
  • Art Directors

Mike Miller, VP of IATSE, stated:

​“These productive talks are a result of the leadership shown by the negotiation committees for the West Coast Studio Locals, many of whom were new to the process…We look forward to entering the next phase of this calendar.”

Negotiations with the reaming guilds, Locals 44 (Craftspersons) and Local 884 (Studio Teachers), will continue this week.

​The shared contract for all guilds under IASTE expires on July 31st.

How did a mountain even get into space anyway? The beloved indoor roller coaster has been given a ​film adaptation​. Disney has tasked the team behind Netflix’s action Avatar Rideback with making the audience understand just what Space Mountain is, something that arguably might be best left unexplained. Who has been tasked with writing the script and penning the premise? The writing team of Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, showrunners of Citadel (2023) and Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop (2021), have taken on the challenge. Bebop was praised for its art direction and action scenes, but it upset some fans of the original anime when its story veered too much from the original source material and characters. Space Mountain doesn’t have that problem. There is not a lot of the IP to adapt to, but the attraction has a pretty bare-bones story, with plenty of room for Appelbaum and Nemec to create and expand upon.

THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT

Turns of the rumors about The Office reboot are true. – The Office’ has ​announced​ casting and formally announced its existence as a show in The Office universe. Domhnall Gleeson (Ex Machina, Frank, Black Mirror) and ​Sabrina Impacciatore (White Lotus) have both been cast, but NBC has been tight-lipped about who they are playing; they are also not explaining the strange apostrophe in the title.

​Domhnall Gleeson​ has a stint of playing a lot of straight-faced indie protags, but he showed an aptitude for an awkward look-at-camera comedy in this ​scene in Frank​ (2014).

​Sabrina Impacciatore​ shone in her role as Valentina on White Lotus as the impeccably uptight front desk manager who burst at the seams in front of her crush. Impacciatore had one of the most hilarious (and improvised) ​quips in the show​.

Usually, with reboots, ​people react badly​. This is a reboot that looks like it might try to do something different, but with the same showrunner, hopefully, that brings the same heart.

SNL alums Molly Shannon and Steve Koren are working on a ​new comedy series​ for HBO.

Both comedians are EPing the untitled project, written by Koren and starring Shannon, which is already in development.

It tells the story of a woman (Shannon) deeply addicted to celebrity gossip who, after being confronted with this obsession by family and friends, decides to seek help at a fancy celebrity rehab in Malibu.

Shannon and Koren first met at 30 Rock in 1995, working together on numerous sketches, including Superstar, so successful it was later turned into its spinoff movie (1999).

Watch Molly Shannon as her most famous SNL character, Mary-Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic schoolgirl with dreams of becoming a star (​clip​).

More recently, Shannon worked with frequent collaborator Mike White in a guest role as an overbearing mother-in-law in the first season of HBO’s White Lotus (​clip​).

This year, Shannon will join the already star-studded cast of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building in a recurring role in its upcoming fourth season.

Tidbit:

Ethan Coen’s solo directorial effort, Honey Don’t, the midpoint of his B-Movie lesbian trilogy (Drive Away Dolls was the first), is rounding out its cast.

Just added:

• Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny)
• Billy Eichner (Billy on the Street)
• Talia Ryder (Never Rarely Sometimes Always)
• Kristen Connolly (House of Cards)

And ​others​.

FESTIVALS

Cannes Market 2024. Ryuhei Kitamura (dir: The Midnight Meat Train, starring Bradley Cooper) is bringing ​Thrill Ride​ to the Marché du Film.

Here’s the official synopsis:

A group of people are trapped upside down on a rollercoaster when it’s suddenly taken over by a mysterious saboteur threatening to drop them all one by one to their deaths.

Kitamura stated:

Kitamura has a deliriously wicked cinematic proclivity when it comes to seeing people srung upside down. Just watch the ​trailer​ for The Midnight Meat Train.

The Paramount Writers Mentoring Program, active for over two decades, has launched over 125 careers, including 18 current showrunners and executive producers. Aimed at diverse emerging writers, the eight-month program features mentoring, weekly workshops with industry professionals, and mock writers’ rooms, providing crucial industry access and skills development.

Applications are open for the 2024/2025 cycle. Apply ​here​.

Deadline: May 1st.

INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT

Hundreds of Beavers is a rare indie gem. Wearing its smattering of weird inspirations on its sleeve:

• A nature documentary crossed with ​psychopathic furries​
• Buster Keaton’s slapstick humor
• Looney Tunes

Nothing looks quite like Hundreds of Beavers.

Official synopsis:

In this 19th-century supernatural winter epic, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America’s greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.

It’s a ​trailer​ that has to be seen.

Mike Cheslik, the director, writer, actor, editor, and VFX, picked up a panoply of festival awards for the film.

Hundreds of Beavers is streaming now on Fandor.

Oscar-nominated actor and co-founder of PageBoy Productions, Elliot Page, is set to bring a ​captivating love story​ from the page to the big screen.

Here’s the official synopsis for Eliot Schrefer’s 2021 sci-fi novel, The Darkness Outside Us:

Two boys, alone in space.

After the first settler on Titan trips her distress signal, neither remaining country on Earth can afford to scramble a rescue of its own, and so two sworn enemies are installed in the same spaceship.

As they journey through space, they are confronted with the realization that love may hold the key to their survival.

Page brought on Matt Jordan Smith (EP: Page’s Close to You) and Tuck Dowrey to help run the company, who expressed great excitement over the upcoming book-to-film adaption saying:

PageBoy Productions was founded in 2021, producing films such as the family drama Close to You (2023) and the coming-of-age sports film Backspot (2023) starring Evan Rachel Wood.

Elliot Page can be seen in the fourth and final season of Netflix’s superhero drama Umbrella Academy set for release this August.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Ron Perlman is a Spanish Gentleman. Perlman stars in The Gentleman, the feature narrative directorial debut of ​Gabriel Beristain​, whose filmography is impressive:

• The Beekeeper (2024)
  • DP
• Black Widow (2021)
  • DP
• Fury (2014)
  • DP, Los Angeles
• Blade: Trinity (2004), Blade II (2002)
  • DP
• The Green Mile (1999)
  • DP (present-day sequences)
• K2 (1991)
  • DP

Here’s the official synopsis for The Gentleman:

Aging ex-soldier Theo (Perlman) meets weekly with prostitute Olga to reminisce. After Olga’s murder, Theo seeks bloody revenge, attracting the attention of alcoholic cop Iborra and hitman Herodes.

Beristain stated:

Film Factory just ​acquired​ the rights to the film.

First look photo of Perlman in the film ​here​.

ON THIS DAY

1928. The Passion of Joan of Arc, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, starring Renée Jeanne Falconetti and Eugène Silvain, is released in Denmark.

See you tomorrow!

Written by Gabriel Miller, Spencer Carter, and Madelyn Menapace.

Editor: ​Gabriel Miller​.