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Good morning: In today’s edition of The Industry, we look at:
Matthew McConaughey goes virtual, Amazon’s fun, Bill Hader is a cat, behind Leave The World Behind and Mayhem!
Let’s go!
THE INDUSTRY NEWS
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Oh. What. Fun. Amazon MGM is doubling down on its partnership with Director Michael Showalter. Their romance The Idea of You (starring Anne Hathaway), which we profiled in yesterday’s edition, has received a record number of trailer views. Their next project is the holiday comedy Oh. What. Fun. starring Michelle Pfeiffer (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Scarface).
Here’s the official synopsis from the book on which the film is based:
Everyone is home for the holidays, clamoring for all the Christmas cheer only their mother can whip up. They can already smell the chestnuts roasting—or is that Mom’s hair on fire? From a New York Times bestselling author comes a laugh-out-loud short story for any mom who’d rather wreck the halls.
Showalter co-wrote the script with the original author, Chandler Baker.
No details on production dates have been released.
$5M Grand Prize. The biggest payout in TV history will come from Amazon Studio’s partnership with MrBeast for its new reality competition series Beast Games.
1000 contestants will compete for the grand prize.
Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, is the world’s #2 YouTuber with 234M subs. MrBeast is best known for his wild competition videos ($456K Squid Game in Real Life, 100 Days Trapped win 500K). Amazon reportedly signed a nearly $100M deal to work with MrBeast on Beast Games.
It continues the trend of Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon, spending big on mass entertainment (e.g., the Rings of Power gamble).
Salke stated:
“MrBeast has captured the attention and imagination of fans of all ages, from all walks of life, and all over the world… We are excited to work with Jimmy and his talented team to bring his brilliant, high production, and stakes-raising concepts to Beast Games for our global customers to experience.”
MrBeast will host and EP.
Zack Snyder hopes to stick the landing with Rebel Moon: Part 2. Netflix released part one to incredibly negative press. Currently, it stands at 21 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Criticisms ranged from flat characters, strange cuts, and an overreliance on slow-mo. Snyder claims that this is only half of it, promising this new movie and R-rated “Synder cuts” of both films in the near future. This feels a bit like an artificial attempt at creating the same fervor that Snyder’s long-prophesied Justice League cut stirred up.
Watch the Rebel Moon: Part 2 trailer here.
Two deals:
Rian Johnson (Dir: Looper, Knives Out, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and Ram Bergman (prod: Looper, Knives Out, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) have signed a two-picture deal with Warner Bros. Notably, they will be leaving Netflix, who funded and distributed the (very expensive) Knives Out films.
Soo Hugh, the creator, showrunner, writer, and producer of Apple TV+’s acclaimed series Pachinko (trailer), has struck a multi-year deal with Apple.
THE ACTOR SPOTLIGHT
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Bill Hader is explosively funny in the SNL sketch The Cat in the Hat and Linda (clip). He dons the full make-up and commits hard to the bit.
Now, it’s no longer a joke.
Bill Hader will voice The Cat in a Dr. Seuss-authorized reboot of Cat In The Hat from Warner Bros Animation. Hader’s penchant for zaniness on SNL launched a formidable voice-acting career:
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
- Narrator (clip)
- Inside Out (2015)
- Fear (clip)
- Sausage Party (2016)
- Firewater (clip)
The president of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, Bill Damaschke, stated:
“With this incredible voice cast led by Bill Hader as the fun-loving, agent of chaos himself and our filmmakers Alessandro and Erica at the helm, we look forward to sharing this Seussian cinematic spectacle with audiences everywhere in 2026!”
We can’t wait for this one. Release date: March 6, 2026.
Rufus Sewell has carved out a comfortable niche for himself playing the villain. In his latest, Scoop, he will play Prince Andrew, who is subjected to Gillian Anderson’s (X-Files) tougher-than-nails interview questions (covered in a previous edition).
Watching Sewell squirm in the new trailer is altogether delightful.
He is best remembered as Count Adhemer, the villain in A Knight’s Tale. Watch how he adeptly handles the expositional dialogue while attempting to charm a lady of noble birth (clip).
He’s also chilling as a Nazi commanding officer whose arc is complex as he begins to question not only his station but the dark ideology his world is sitting upon in all four seasons of Amazon’s Man in the High Castle (2015-2019, best moments).
Scoop will be released on Netflix on April 5th.
Hollywood Actors increasingly lend their voices to video games. While this is not a new phenomenon:
- Fallout 3 (2008)
- Liam Neeson
- Mass Effect 2 (2010)
- Martin Sheen
There’s been a recent acceleration in the trend.
Watch Matthew McConaughey announce what turns him on at The Games Awards (hint: it’s starring in Exodus, an Interstellar-style video game) Clip.
Recently, Megan Fox, Idris Elba, and Keanu Reeves have starred in games.
Gaming is becoming an increasingly important part of the film industry. Annapurna Pictures (Her, Phantom Thread, Foxcatcher) has converted to a gaming studio.
And the largest share of open jobs at Netflix is currently in their Gaming department.
Occasionally, you get actors who cross from video game acting to features and shows. Most notably, Steven Ogg, who is one of the main characters in Grand Theft Auto V (character headshot x headshot).
He can recently be seen in The Walking Dead and Westworld.
FESTIVALS AND RESOURCES
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Enter Your Video Work in The Telly Awards. The Telly Awards honor excellence in video and television across all screens. They have categories for:
- TV or Online Series
- Scripted & Non-scripted
- Documentaries
- Animation
- Branded Content
- Commercials
- Shorts
- Student
And craft categories for:
- Directors
- Writers
- Editors
- Art Directors
- Lighting
- Musicians
By entering, you put your work in the running to be featured alongside diverse and boundary-pushing talent, like past winners Adobe, Netflix, National Geographic, and NASA.
Your work will be reviewed by the Telly Awards Judging Council, industry leaders from companies like Marvel, BBC, Vimeo, and more.
Whether you are making original shorts, commercials, documentaries, or animation, be sure to enter your work.
Deadline Friday, April 5th. Submit here.
TECH SECTION
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One of last year’s most intense VFX shots is an oil tanker grounding on a beach, nearly plowing into Julia Roberts and her husband Ethan Hawke in Leave the World Behind.
It’s at once agonizingly slow and overwhelmingly dangerous.
The Production VFX Supervisor Chris Harvey explained:
“The oil tanker, for example, is this slow, unrelenting unfolding of the large ship running aground. Usually when we see these sorts of things in film they are frenetic, high action, relying on an almost sensory overload of information being thrown at you so fast it creates a sense of overwhelming impact, where in VFX we need to focus on making individual 3 second snippets look photorealistic.”
He continued:
“But Sam [director] wanted it to be impactful in a different way, in a more realistic sense of how would this really feel to witness… in all the agony of the time it takes for an event to happen… he wanted to sit in it. There was nothing to hide behind for realism. No tricks or sleight of hands we could use for the suspension of disbelief.”
Watch how they pulled it off in this elegant VFX breakdown.
INDIE FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHT
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Teyana Taylor played the piercing lead of the Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic winner A Thousand and One. She is now directing her first feature film, Get Lite, for Paramount.
Here’s the official synopsis:
The film follows a studious New York City teenager who has his world upended when he falls for a charismatic beatmaker (Storm Reid) who recruits him to join her Litefeet dance crew, forcing him to choose between a safe academic path and his rekindled love of dance.
Teyana Taylor comes from a hip-hop dance background. She choreographed a Beyonce music video in 2006 and was the star of Kanye West’s stunning Fade music video, entirely comprised of a dancing routine. She won best video director of the year at the BET Awards in 2020 and 2023. Her latest directorial work is a music video for Diddy featuring a horse.
Get Lite is currently in development.
David Mamet is back. It’s been reported that he’s filming a movie with Shia LaBeouf that is an adaptation of his play Henry Johnson (whose cast included LaBeouf).
Here’s the light official synopsis for the play:
The plight of a man after an act of compassion upends his life.
Mamet revealed on a podcast that he’d been tapped to write a screenplay about Hunter Biden. Mamet’s last feature film he directed was Redbelt (2008).
His best work is the play and subsequent screenplay for the acerbicly sharp-witted Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) starring Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, and Ed Harris (trailer).
As of late, Mamet has become very polarizing.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
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More Mayhem from StudioCanal. The French production and distribution studio has teamed up with WTFilms to make more genre-focused films.
Their most recent collaboration was Farang a bloody Thai vengeance film (trailer). The movie made $1.5M in France and was distributed in the US by IFC under the title Mayhem!
This collaboration will run for two years, and StudioCanal will co-produce and distribute genre pictures for WTFilms.
Dimitri Stephanides and Gregory Chambet, who co-founded WTFilms, said:
“Since its beginning, the DNA of WTFilms has been closely linked to our personal taste for this cinema. Today, we are very enthusiastic about the idea of plowing this furrow with Studiocanal, whose ambitions in this area align with ours and those of many talented directors, to produce films with strong commercial potential both in France and abroad.”
WTFilms has a good eye for identifying talent. They served as the worldwide sales rep for Infested (2023). The director of that film, Sébastien Vanicek, was tapped last month to direct an Evil Dead reboot.
ON THIS DAY
1964 Sean Connery’s 1st day of shooting on James Bond film Goldfinger.
See you tomorrow!
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Written by Gabriel Miller. Research by Spencer Carter.
Editor: Gabriel Miller.
