Peter Hujar's Day by Linda Rosenkrantz

VARIETY

Sundance: Ira Sachs Drama ‘Peter Hujar’s Day’ Sells to Sideshow, Janus Films

“Peter Hujar’s Day,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance, has sold to Sideshow and Janus Films. It’s one of the few projects to land a buyer out of the festival so far.

Written and directed by Ira Sachs, “Peter Hujar’s Day” is set over a 24-hour period in December 1974 and centers on one conversation between photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and his close friend, writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), who recorded their talk for an art project. Hujar, who died of AIDS in 1987, only became celebrated as an artist after his death.

The film debuted in Park City to positive reviews, with Variety’s Owen Gleiberman calling it a “magical 1974 time capsule of a movie.” In his review, he wrote that “in its tiny-scaled staged-documentary way, ‘Peter Hujar’s Day’ is exquisitely done and arresting to watch.”

Peter Hujar’s Day by Linda Rosenkrantz

VANITY FAIR

Inside Ben Whishaw’s Transformation Into Iconic Photographer Peter Hujar

Bolstered by a brilliant performance from Whishaw, Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day brings a major artist to vivid life. “Ben said to me it was the hardest thing he’s ever done,” the director tells Vanity Fair.

In 1974, about a week before Christmas, the photographer Peter Hujar met up with his close friend, author Linda Rosenkrantz. Rosenkrantz wanted him to tell her everything he’d done the day before, from when he woke up to when he went to bed, from what he did for work to what he ate for dinner. Their conversation was recorded, and published in full more than 40 years later in Peter Hujar’s Day, a slim but evocative 37-page book that highlights the warmth between two close friends—and the off-the-cuff sensibility of a particular and major artist.

Ira Sachs, director of such great New York films as Keep the Lights On and Love Is Strange, saw a movie in that book. He’s taken its parameters—the single location, the winding and unfiltered conversation—to create a textured, rambly, richly cinematic historical portrait. “Nostalgia doesn’t interest me, but you can go deeper than that and try to get something about the energy, which is timeless,” he tells Vanity Fair. “The recording was in 1974, and we shot in 2024, so it’s a 50-year gap—and yet that gap disappears in the process.”

Part of this has to do with Hujar, played in the film by Ben Whishaw (who also starred in Sachs’s last movie, Passages). Whether describing a long afternoon spent with Allen Ginsberg, laying out his precise strategy when ordering Chinese takeout, or musing on his contemporaries Susan Sontag and William Burroughs, he’s one of a kind—a figure of an era now associated with profound artistic community and enormous loss. (Hujar died at 53 years old, 10 months after being diagnosed with AIDS.) “Read it and weep if you didn’t know him,” the artist Nan Goldin once said of the Peter Hujar’s Day book. “Or read it and weep if you did that we lost him.”

Sachs’s adaptation, premiering Monday at the Sundance Film Festival and costarring Rebecca Hall as Rosenkrantz, may inspire a similar, melancholy directive. It’ll mark an introduction for many to Hujar. His intimate black-and-white portraits have gone on to great renown after being relatively unheralded during his actual life. The iconic photo Orgasmic Man, from Hujar’s series in the late ’60s that captured men at moments of sexual release, became the cover for the best-selling novel A Little Life; the Morgan Library acquired 100 of his prints as well as his writings back in 2013. But this 16mm movie—and Whishaw’s cellular portrayal—bring Hujar back to prickly, witty life as only cinema can.

Vanity Fair: When did you first start to learn about Peter, and how would you describe your relationship to his work?

Ira Sachs: I remember I went to Matthew Marks Gallery in Chelsea probably 20 years ago. That’s when I first started seeing shows of Peter’s. There was a very significant exhibit of his work at the Morgan Library about a decade ago. I came to New York in 1988. My life was in the East Village—my social life and my artistic life and my sexual life. Artists from that time and place were kind of my mentors, even though I didn’t know them. The way in which they lived their lives and their commitment to work—which was honest and radical and fearless, uninhibited—documented a time and a place which had so much loss and so much feeling.

I’ve been engaged with those artists. I made a film called Last Address about a group of New York artists who had died of AIDS, which included Peter, and I’m working on another film with Ben set in the East Village in the ’80s. This has been a period that’s given me direction and also that I have a lot of melancholy feelings about. It was also a time in which people would talk to four or five different friends in the course of one day. They would call on the phone; three or four people would drop by unexpectedly. It was a different kind of community as an artist. Recognizing that loss allows me to think about what might work as substitutes for that.

When and how did you see a movie about him, in what’s essentially a monologue of a book?

I was very interested in Peter and his work, and reading the book, I just felt very close to him in a very unexpected way. It’s a short book, but over the 40 pages, I felt like I also had an unexpected intimacy with this very particular friendship—it felt very familiar to me as a gay man, as an artist, as a human. Because it’s a recording of a conversation, there’s no mediation, so in a way it’s like an access point that is unfiltered.

I wanted to start with how you approached Linda, who speaks far less in the film, as she’s technically interviewing Peter. She’s also still alive in real life.

I approached Linda on Instagram, and I started talking to her about the book and the idea for this project. Only after several months of communicating did I realize she was 90 years old, but was still extremely with it and also really a dear and joyous and kind person. Rebecca and Linda talked a lot before they shot the film, and I think that quality is something that Rebecca internalized—it really became more part of her performance than an accent, for example, or anything impressionistic on Linda. It was Rebecca herself—and I saw this once we were in the editing room—who put so much love into Linda’s feelings towards Peter, which I think mirrored feelings Rebecca was having toward Ben in the production. She saw that there was that story even in a deeper way than I could have imagined.

What did you and Linda talk about?

Occasionally it would be things like, Did he smoke cigarettes? What might he have been wearing at the time? We could ask technical questions and then not follow them, to be honest. We felt very free. The film begins and is interrupted in certain times with conscious theatrical gestures in order in a way to accelerate and embrace that freedom. And what I think is so impressive to me about Ben’s performance particularly is how much he’s inside the text, how much he allows us to imagine each moment fully, each person that he describes. You don’t need to know who the people are, but you believe they know who the people are.

You and Ben made this after Passages. This is a very different kind of film, obviously, and it’s quite demanding for him. How did he work through it?

Ben had 55 pages of text to perform, never having done so before the shooting began. On day one, I worried because fluidity was so crucial. But by day two, we found a process that allowed it to be very internal for him, the text to be completely owned and yet not repeated. It’s not a theatrical performance, ultimately. It’s not something he’s doing time and again. The things he discovers are discovered once. That’s what cinema does so differently than theater, and it’s something that Ben’s performance allowed me to hold onto. There’s an immediacy.

Ben said to me it was the hardest thing he’s ever done. It’s a monumental task. It’s actually tremendous what he’s pulling off. It’s not the amount of words, it’s the amount of singular moments within the words that he has to describe and convey.

How did you figure out the parameters of the film? Is the script just a transcript?

The script is the text from the transcript, reimagined over the course of a day. Still in one location, but kind of expanded upon to become a series of vignettes within different parts of his apartment at different times of day and in different moods. That was hard to come by. I didn’t see the shape of the film until I saw pre-production barreling towards me. On a production level, it came together very quickly and very actually, easily—and then suddenly I was like, what do I do with this material, two people talking? What was important to me was to find a cinematic solution to what could have been a very stagnant experience.

So how did you find that solution? Because you do achieve something genuinely, surprisingly cinematic.

Well, a couple of things really helped. One was seeing a number of films that were made in New York City in the ’60s and ’70s that were very personal filmmaking; subject, camera, room, people, artists. So films like Shirley Clark’s Portrait of Jason, and a film by Jim McBride called My Girlfriend’s Wedding, and Chantal Akerman’s early work. Andy Warhol’s Poor Little Rich Girl, which has Edie Sedgwick in the Chelsea Hotel. These films of which a lot could be said in very minimal ways. I saw in them the use of ellipses that happened because the film rolled out, or they cut between something indoors and outdoors. Those films gave me the permission to create ellipses in something that didn’t necessarily have them. That was really freeing.

Ultimately we worked for a couple of weeks with stand-ins. And Alex Ashe, my cinematographer, and I shot these two figures in various spaces at various times in the location. Suddenly I ran into a sense that I was making a movie much more about portraiture than I had imagined…. I realized that there was a story in photography inside the film. Which was pleasurable obviously because of the subject, but also was pleasurable to me because that’s what I am interested in, in part, when it comes to cinema: What emotion does an image convey separate from the language or from the text?

Where did you shoot this?

I was lucky enough that a friend of mine had recently become the executive director of Westbeth Artists Housing, and he saw the project as aligned to the mission of Westbeth, which is an artists’ housing space that’s been around since 1971. Its mission is to support and encourage artists—their domestic life and their creation of their work. We were doing all of that, so he gave us this space for a couple of months, gratis. That allowed us to really explore the images we were going to make with a kind of freedom that would not be usual in film production. Merce Cunningham had his office in that building. Many, many artists have been there and are there. The ghosts of other artists were in the building while we made the film. That was resonant to me.

There’s a real energy to these last two films of yours, between Passages and this one, amid a difficult climate for independent filmmaking. I’m curious, taking a step back: How are you feeling as an artist these days?

I feel like I am making hay while the sun shines. I feel fortunate that I met and started to work with [Passages and Frankie producer] Saïd Ben Saïd, and we’re now working on a third feature together to shoot this summer in New York. Careers seem like they’re made by caveat or by faith, but they’re often made by a certain few people. Truly, if Saïd hadn’t taken interest in my work about six or seven years ago, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to sustain.

Since the pandemic—and this is also where I look back at the artists of the East Village in the ’70s and ’80s—I feel that risks must be taken. We’re going to die, so you might as well try. My husband, Boris, says this to me occasionally, when I get kind of nervous that I can’t make something: “If you don’t make it, it won’t exist.” That alternative creates something that encourages me to go forward. I feel like I’m in a forward-moving phase. I really do continue to get inspiration from people who were savvy about the business or the industry or the art form, but they weren’t craven to it, and they found ways of making work that was deeply personal. That’s kind of the needle that I continue to try to thread. There’s some advantage of getting older: I feel like that’s the only needle I’m interested in.

Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley

Martin Freeman Family Feature ‘Flavia,’ About 11-Year-Old Variety

Detective, Sells Wide With Sky Taking the U.K. (EXCLUSIVE)

Upcoming feature film “Flavia,” a family adventure about a precocious young detective, has sold across Europe, including to Sky in the U.K.

The film, which features “The Hobbit” star Martin Freeman opposite Molly Belle Wright (“Deep Water”) as the eponymous detective Flavia, has started principal photography, with a first look image showing the duo alongside Toby Jones (“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”) in a dusty library. It is due to wrap in November.

Karan Gill (“The Decameron”), Annette Badland (“Ted Lasso”) and Jonathan Pryce ( “Slow Horses”) also star.

“Flavia” is directed by Bharat Nalluri (“Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day”) and based on Alan Bradley’s book series about 11-year-old amateur detective Flavia de Luce. Susan Coyne (“Daisy Jones and the Six”) adapted the script.

“When Flavia finds a dead body at her decaying British manor house and her father is accused of the murder, Flavia dives into her own wild and fearless investigation, unearthing long held family secrets and pitting herself against the true murderer,” reads the logline.

Sky have landed U.K. rights to the pic with BIM picking up for Italy, Cinemundo for Portugal, M2 for Eastern Europe and ACME for Baltics. Rakuten have picked up rights for Japan and Echo Lake for airlines. Elevation will release in Canada.

Protaganist Pictures, who are handling international sales, will be at AFM with the film. CAA Media Finance are handling US rights and arranged financing for the film.

“We’re beyond excited that filming has begun, and we are able to share an initial glimpse into Flavia’s world,” said Protagonist’s CCO George Hamilton. “Molly is surrounded by such an amazing cast and under Bharat’s skilled direction, the first of the Flavia de Luce mystery stories is bursting into life as a thoroughly entertaining film that will appeal to the whole family.”

Peter Hujar's Day by Linda Rosenkrantz

Artnet

An Upcoming Film on Photographer Peter Hujar Has Found Its Leading Man

The biopic will be directed by indie filmmaker Ira Sachs.

A forthcoming biopic on the late photographer Peter Hujar has cast its lead. British actor Ben Whishaw, best known for his role as Q in the recent James Bond franchise, will play Hujar in the film, which will be directed by American indie filmmaker Ira Sachs.  

The film, titled Peter Hujar’s Day, looks to be based on a 2021 book of the same name by Linda Rosenkrantz, which documents Hujar’s life and activities over 24 hours in 1974. The volume takes the form of a transcript of a conversation between the writer and photographer, who discussed Hujar’s day right down to its minutest detail (“I go and I make another cup of coffee and two pieces of toast with raspberry jelly and now I’m going to call Allen Ginsberg,” and the like). 

The movie, Sachs told Indiewire, is “about the photographer… and his friend Linda in December of 1974 in New York City. This is a film about what it is to be an artist among artists in a city where no one was making any money.” 

Though trained in commercial photography, Hujar, by the 1960s, had forewent a flourishing commercial career to pursue art. He turned his lens toward the city’s downtown and queer cultures, unflinchingly documenting their complexities in stark, intimate black-and-white images. Some of his most seminal photographs were compiled in 1975’s Portraits in Life and Death, which featured still lifes, cityscapes, and portraits of Susan Sontag, John Waters, and William Burroughs. 

In his day, Hujar formed friendships with peers like Robert Mapplethorpe and Diane Arbus; more notably, his relationship with David Wojnarowicz helped inspire the latter younger artist’s practice. “Everything I made,” Wojnarowicz remembered, “I made for Peter.” 

However incisive and potent his work, Hujar was never widely recognized for it in his lifetime (his 1975 book, for one, sold poorly). But decades on from his death from AIDS in 1987, his reputation has only grown, helped by a slate of publications and shows including the touring retrospective, “Speed of Life” (2017–19). Of this revival, Sachs’s biopic is a part.  

Peter Hujar’s Day will mark Whishaw and Sachs’s second collaboration, following Passages (2023), a romantic drama centered on a gay couple rocked by betrayal. Whishaw is currently on the BAFTA’s 2024 Supporting Actor longlist for his work on the film. 

The Apprentice by Gabriel Sherman

The New York Times

‘The Apprentice’ Review: An Origin Story for Donald J. Trump

In this ribald fictional telling of a young Trump’s rise, the man responsible is the lawyer Roy Cohn, played to sleazy perfection by Jeremy Strong.

Midway through “The Apprentice,” a gleefully vulgar fictional dramatization of the loves and deals of the young Donald J. Trump, the movie’s look changes. From the start, the images have had the grainy quality that you sometimes see in films from the 1970s, which is when the movie opens. Then suddenly, while Donald — a terrific Sebastian Stan — is giving a TV interview in 1980, faint horizontal lines begin slicing across the image, evoking the flicker in analog video. It’s a sly nod at the future and a brand-new reality: A (television) star is born.

“The Apprentice” is arriving in theaters less than a month before the U.S. presidential election, but it would be a strain to call this energetic, queasily funny if finally very bleak portrait an October surprise. The real Trump’s reaction to the movie suggested that it had the makings of a bombshell, though the most shocking parts of the movie have been reported elsewhere. His campaign called it “garbage” the day after its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and his lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to the filmmakers. Yet the only news here — and, really, the greatest surprise — is how thoroughly this ribald, at times predictably unflattering movie humanizes its protagonist, a classic American striver.

In broad strokes, “The Apprentice” recounts a familiar story of individual empowerment and (gilded) bootstraps through Donald, who hungers for the very best, or at least shiniest, that life can offer, be it women, clothing, swank digs or amber waves of hair. Like the hero in a Horatio Alger tale, except with, you know, family money and connections, Donald finds success partly through his association with a slithery lawyer, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong, fantastic), who was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s chief counsel during the Senate’s 1950s investigations into Communist influence in the United States. Roy becomes Donald’s mentor, helping him achieve his American dream that here has the makings of a nightmare.

The director Ali Abbasi thrusts you right in the scrum, opening on Donald as he navigates the outwardly mean, trash-choked streets of Times Square. It’s 1973, and New York seems to be on the ropes. Parts of the city look like they’ve been bombed, and its rats are on the march. It’s tough out there, even for ambitious go-getters. Yet Donald, who’s in his late 20s and works for the Trump family’s sprawling real-estate business — he knocks on residential tenant doors to personally collect the rent — has grandiose plans to revive the struggling city and make his fortune by giving a hulking, rundown Midtown hotel a classy makeover.

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Donald’s aspirations for that hotel, the Commodore, become the first in a series of ladder rungs he grasps on his upward climb through the 1970s and into the go-go ’80s. Working from a script by Gabriel Sherman, Abbasi tracks Donald’s high points and low on his transformational journey, which takes him from testy meals in his parents’ Queens home and into Manhattan’s corridors of power, its boardrooms and party dens. Whether in the back seat of a stretch limo or riding along with Roy Cohn in a Rolls, Donald is on the make and on the move. (Sherman wrote “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” a biography of the Fox News executive Roger Ailes; Abbasi’s directing credits include “Holy Spider.”)

Donald’s path, as it were, proves grim and glittering by turns, and is lined with shrewd wheedling, outlandish excesses, sketchy characters and anguished family drama. There’s also somewhat of a fork in his road, symbolized by his relationship with Roy and his romance with a feisty, skeptical Czech model, Ivana (an appealing Maria Bakalova). The movie suggests that Ivana is good for Donald and maybe a potential lodestar, but he’s in thrall to Roy and to his father, Fred (an unrecognizable Martin Donovan). A tyrant who berates his grown children at the family dining-room table, especially his eldest son, Freddy (Charlie Carrick), Fred is the father Donald conspicuously fears and whom he trades in for Roy.

Abbasi sets a brisk, at times frenetic pace from the start, using an opening blast of punk music (“Anti, Anti, Anti” from the Consumers) like a quasi-heraldic trumpet. With the aid of his resourceful cinematographer, Kasper Tuxen, and with some smartly deployed archival footage, Abbasi drops Donald into the urban fray, enveloping him in bright lights and drifting clouds of sewer steam. The punk yowling soon gives way to the velvety, funereal hush of an exclusive restaurant, a sanctuary for the wealthy where Roy, seated at a table crowded with his gargoyle gangster pals, first spots Donald, who’s all by his lonesome.

Roy has Donald at hello, the lawyer’s dead eyes locking on their target, and a transactional, mutually advantageous relationship soon develops, one that Stan and Strong turn into a mesmerizing duet. Each actor has clearly made an attentive study of his character’s real-life counterpart, his mannerisms, how he moves and especially his voice: Roy’s is often spookily flat while Donald’s tends toward a singsong whine. The resemblance between the originals and copies can be startling, including when Donald purses his lips or Roy flicks out his tongue (a Cohn tic). One of the attractions of biopics is watching how they repackage reality into a fictional entertainment, one that sometimes, as in this movie, has the eerie sting of life.

Trump is one of the most famous figures in the modern era, of course, and if you’re reading this, you probably have read or watched some of the same sources the movie draws upon. Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” revisits his relationship with Cohn, as do documentaries like “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” Less well known, perhaps, is the claim that Trump sexually assaulted Ivana Trump, which he has denied. The 1993 book “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” by Harry Hurt III, includes the accusation as well as a statement from Ivana Trump. She writes that while she said in her divorce deposition that he raped her, she doesn’t “want her words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal fashion.”

“The Apprentice” stages the sexual assault, and it’s brutal. It also shifts the movie into a darker, much creepier register that doesn’t wholly jibe with everything that has come before: the gonzo excesses, Roy’s star-studded bacchanalia (Andy Warhol! Ed Koch!), Donald’s obsessive fussing with his hair, the whole gaudy package. Throughout it all, Donald builds a veritable empire and Trump Tower, and he becomes a nationally prominent figure who now easily overshadows Fred and Roy both. Donald has turned himself into the king of his world by the ’80s, and while the movie encourages you to laugh at his extremes, his vanity and braggadocio, the one thing that the filmmakers don’t prepare you for, even if you should know better, is the magnitude of the American tragedy rapidly unfolding before you.

American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee

VARIETY

Ashley Avis Tapped to Write and Direct ‘American Wolf’ for Apple (EXCLUSIVE)

Ashley Avis has been tapped to write and direct ‘American Wolf‘ for Apple Original Films.

The film is based on a novel by Nate Blakeslee. It chronicles the captivating true story of O-Six, a highly intelligent alpha female wolf, whose rise and tragic fall catapult the persecution of her species into the global spotlight. O-Six’s journey intertwines with that of a reclusive naturalist, a devoted activist and an intrepid biologist, who together risk everything to protect the fragile recovery of wolves of Yellowstone. The film is still in development and has not been greenlit, sources say.

Appian Way will produce the film with Blakeslee serving as consulting producer. Appian Way is overseen by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson.

The film was formerly set up via Appian Way at Warners. After seeing Avis’ documentary, “Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West,” which examined the U.S. government’s treatment of wild horse populations, Appian Way brought Avis on board to write and direct and they sold “American Wolf’ as a pitch to Apple.

“Wild Beauty” was nominated for a 2023 Critics Choice Nominee, and earned her a Special Congressional Commendation. Even before her new film was announced, Avis has become active in the protection of wolves against torture, cruelty and senseless killing. 

In addition to her advocacy work, Avis is also set to write and is set to direct the remake of “City of Angels” for Warner Bros, with Charles Roven and Paul Perez producing.  She most recently directed “The Lamb,” becoming the first Western woman to ever helm a film in Saudi Arabia, for MBC and Jeremy Bolt. Previously, Ashley wrote, directed and edited the reprisal of “Black Beauty,” starring Kate Winslet and Mackenzie Foy for Disney+. Avis and her husband and producing partner, Edward Winters co-founded Winterstone Pictures in Los Angeles.

Avis is repped by WME, Hopscotch Pictures and Yorn Levine. Blakeslee is repped by Hotchkiss Daiy & Associates. Appian Way is repped by LBI and Hanson Jacobson.

The Apprentice by Gabriel Sherman

Vanity Fair

In The Apprentice, Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong Peer Into the Dark Heart of Donald Trump

Before Trump was Trump, he was a young striver taken under the wing of Roy Cohn. The Apprentice dramatizes their sinister bond: “I think of it as a love story, really,” Strong tells Vanity Fair.

After he was cast as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice, Jeremy Strong dove in head first—as he tends to do. The Emmy winner devoured books about the ruthless fixer, watched and read his many colorful interviews, and even listened to raw tapes from a lauded Esquire profile to perfect Cohn’s vocal patterns. He went method on the set—all the better to ad-lib opposite Sebastian Stan’s Donald Trump as the actors traced the nefarious bond that came to shape a city, and maybe a nation. “We did a lot of improvising, which in this case had to be deeply informed,” Strong says. “We had a lot of latitude and freedom to play and take chances.”

All in all, Strong was following his usual process. Yet The Apprentice felt different—unusually difficult to shake off. “I’d go home by myself to the hotel room, and the real-world ramifications of the things that I was espousing and inculcating in Donald Trump really, really shook me,” Strong tells me. “It was a disturbing, upsetting place to be—that heart of darkness.”

Director Ali Abbasi plunges us right into that space in The Apprentice (premiering Monday at the Cannes Film Festival 2024), his provocative examination of the ways Cohn shaped Trump into the infamous politician he would become. But the last thing Abbasi wanted to make was a polemical, election-year warning. The Iranian-born director, best known for critical successes Border and Holy Spider, instead fashioned a gritty, ’70s-New-York-set indie thriller, bringing an outsider’s perspective to iconic—and in many corners, despised—American figures and contextualizing them through a kinetic cinematic lens.

“We wanted to do a punk rock version of a historical movie, which meant that we needed to keep a certain energy, a certain spirit—[not] get too anal about details and what’s right and what’s wrong,” Abbasi says. “America is a country…but it’s also an empire. I was more preoccupied with the empire part of it. For whoever has lived in the Middle East, the whole image of America is someone who meddles and moves peoples and forces and governments around in that region that seems to have unlimited force.”

In other words, America is a lot like Cohn, whom Strong embodies with a brooding, towering menace. Decades after becoming notorious for prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—ultimately resulting in their execution—his reputation precedes him. Cohn knows everyone, wins at any cost, bullies his way past any obstacle, and manipulates both the truth and lies as he sees fit. If that sounds a lot like modern-day Trump, well, he had to learn it somewhere.

1970s Trump is far less assured, striving to break out of his father’s shadow and sweatily desperate to mingle in influential circles. When he and Cohn lock eyes for the first time, the film’s score pitches toward high noir. This is fate: theirs, and perhaps, ours. A few scenes later, Cohn has agreed to represent Trump. In real-world terms, it’s hard to overstate the implications of that decision.

“This movie at its core has a Midnight Cowboy arc to it,” Strong says. “I think of it as a love story, really. It’s a chaste love story between a teacher and a pupil—these two men from the boroughs who aspired to Fifth Avenue.” He later considers Cohn within another metaphor: “He’s like a heart-of-darkness heart donor—and the heart got transplanted to Donald Trump.”

Depending on how he chooses to look at it, screenwriter Gabriel Sherman started working on The Apprentice either 20-ish years ago, or around 2017. Sherman, who is now a Vanity Fair special contributor, launched his career as a reporter at the New York Observer in the early 2000s, covering real estate. Trump emerged as a surprisingly reliable source. “It was just amazing that he was supposedly a billionaire, but if I’d call his office, within 10 minutes he would immediately call back,” Sherman tells me.

He continued to cover the man who’d go on to host his own hit TV series, naturally named The Apprentice, up through his defiantly successful presidential campaign. But as Sherman immersed himself in Trumpworld, one particular theme kept coming up in his reporting.

“I kept hearing people who had known Donald since the ’80s say something like, ‘Well, he’s just using all of the things that Roy taught him,’” Sherman says. “All of the phrases: It’s going to be amazing. Believe me. It came to me in a flash.” He wrote a treatment, then script drafts under the supervision of executive producer Amy Baer, but found Hollywood less than eager to jump on a psychologically intense Trump drama so early in his presidency. (In the meantime, Sherman wrote on Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, adapted from his Roger Ailes–focused book of the same name.) So they waited, and pondered the best way to make the movie once its time finally arrived.

“We wanted a non-American director, because non-American filmmakers tend to have an extraordinary lens through which they view American culture,” says Baer, citing Midnight Cowboy as an example. “The first time Ali and I spoke, he cited Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon, which I thought was a brilliant and unexpected comp for this movie—a social climber who absorbs the affectations of the people and cultures around him because he himself stands for nothing.”

While writing, Sherman had ’70s New York classics on his mind—Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver, and Network—while Stan says he honed this particular take on Trump through Abbasi’s references to Midnight Cowboy and Boogie Nights. Stan signed on years before financing came together (in a Canadian, Danish, and Irish coproduction). “It was a long, arduous process, and to be honest, I just didn’t know if I could do it,” the actor says. “I just scoured the internet and everything I could find…all around the time period that the movie was taking place. I watched everything.”

Abbasi describes their collaboration as constant and thorough. “We were looking at videos of Donald Trump at different ages, talking about his way of walking, talking, speaking, eating—everything.” Stan’s take on Trump, Sherman says, “feels like the person that I know, and it has nothing to do with the person we see on TV…. It’s such a risky role, and Sebastian is fearless. He just did whatever he had to do to become this person.”

There were a million directions Stan could’ve gone in—and that’s also true for both Strong and Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova, who does savvy work in the film as Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump. As the SAG-AFTRA strike delayed filming—the production eventually secured an interim agreement with the guild—Bakalova started growing and manicuring huge, long red nails. “I usually don’t really wear a lot of makeup,” she cracks. “This changed my personality!”

“We realized that if we get too close, we’re in Saturday Night Live territory. But if we get too far away, you don’t really feel it,” Abbasi says. They achieved a middle ground by avoiding any biopic gloss: “This is not a movie where people are supposed to look good.” The makeup and hair are meticulous in their glaring imperfections, reinforcing Abbasi’s focus on physical decay and patchwork: “These people are some of the most powerful people in New York society at the time,” says Abbasi. Yet “Roy’s face looks strange, gray, brownish, his eyes are bloodshot, his forehead is shiny. Donald has strange teeth and looks unhealthy.”

Each portrayal has its own curious empathy. Stan charts Trump’s descent into power-driven madness subtly, emphasizing his relative humanity and emotional range before hitting nightmarishly familiar beats later in the film. As he gains influence and emerges as a dominant cultural force, Trump all but abandons Cohn, who’s not-so-secretly dying from HIV-AIDS.

Unlike, say, Al Pacino’s loud, flamboyant take on Cohn in Angels in America, Strong’s approach is mournful. “I’ll say unequivocally that he’s the most fascinating person I’ve ever studied,” Strong says. “I found myself moved by the arc of the character when he got sick. Someone who has lived in denial of so much, suddenly facing the end, and the searing regret and primal pain of that for someone who’s done so much damage. I don’t think he particularly felt much remorse, but he was a person.”

Ivana, meanwhile, acts as the initial wedge between the two men. Bakalova connected with her story, as a headstrong immigrant thrust into a dizzying, at times brutal world of celebrity and wealth. “I wanted to see what she saw in him, why she got impressed by him,” she says. The film doesn’t paint Ivana as a victim, even as it bluntly depicts the darkest moments of her marriage to Trump. “I keep questioning myself: ‘How did she agree to that?’ But maybe she knew what she was stepping into,” Bakalova says. “It’s another side of her being intelligent—somebody that I can, of course, criticize in moments, and also empathize with.”

People think of Trump as this kind of fully formed tabloid figure—they think of the person they see at the rallies giving all these unhinged speeches,” Sherman says. “But the Trump of the ’70s was a very different person. While he was aggressive and he was ambitious, he did not know how to project power the way he does today. We need to understand how people like Cohn and Trump are able to wield power and manipulate the truth and create their own reality through deception. That’s a universal story.”

This is but one answer to the question looming around The Apprentice: Why make a Trump movie, and why now? He’s been sucking the oxygen out of Hollywood for going on a decade; even now, his fraught reelection campaign is moving forward while he stands criminal trial. But both Sherman and Abbasi emphasize they wanted to “strip politics” from their movie, to craft a dark character study that speaks to a larger, darker system of power in the US.

It may be difficult for viewers to remove the political context, especially as the movie teases the Trump phenomenon that will emerge out of this period—the absurdist characters now in his orbit who previously circled Cohn, the now groan-inducing catchphrases packaged over decades. At a press conference on Tuesday, Cannes’s jury president Greta Gerwig was asked about her ability to “objectively” assess the film as an American woman, and said, “I try to come to every film that we see with an open mind and an open heart, and willing to be surprised…. I don’t want to make any assumptions about what it is.”

The filmmakers hope general audiences adopt a similar attitude. There are thorny ideas and bold arguments in The Apprentice that will stick with you. The same goes for the characters, who are simultaneously vile and sad and slightly silly. “I’m a very all-or-nothing kind of person when it comes to the work stuff,” Stan says. “It’s hard for me to go with one foot in and one foot out.”

Stan spent much of production wondering what exact tone they’d land on, given the latitude they had with the script. That spontaneity informed the final product. “The shoot was pretty ride-or-die. It was fast. We didn’t have a lot of money,” Strong says. “You can’t imagine a bigger limb to go out on for either of us. I think we both felt that.”

The Better Sister by Alafair Burke

VARIETY

Elizabeth Banks, Jessica Biel to Star in ‘Better Sister’ Series Adaptation at Amazon

Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Biel are set to headline a series adaptation of the Alafair Burke novel “The Better Sister” at Amazon Prime Video, Variety has learned.

“The Better Sister” is described as a thriller about “Chloe (Biel), who moves through the world with her handsome lawyer husband Adam and teenage son Ethan by her side while her estranged sister Nicky (Banks) hustles to make ends meet while trying to stay clean,” per the official description. “When Adam is brutally murdered, the prime suspect sends shockwaves through the family, laying bare long-buried secrets.”

The series hails from Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado, who will serve as showrunners and executive producers. Banks will also executive produce via Brownstone Productions, as will Biel and Michelle Purple under their Iron Ocean Films banner. Craig Gillespie will direct in addition to executive producing along with Annie Marter through Fortunate Jack Productions. The series is a co-production between Tomorrow Studios (an ITV Studios partner) and Amazon MGM Studios, with Marty Adelstein, Becky Clements, and Alissa Bachner of Tomorrow Studios executive producing. Burke will consult on the series.

“Beyond being an enticing thriller full of twists and turns, ‘The Better Sister’ is a gripping story about family feuds and forgiveness,” says Vernon Sanders, head of television at Amazon MGM Studios. “The brilliant duo of Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks are sure to bring these characters to life in the most authentic way alongside Olivia, Regina, Craig, and the talented team at Tomorrow Studios. The series is in the best hands to bring Alafair Burke’s original IP to life for our global Prime Video customers.”

As an actress, Banks is known for starring in “The Hunger Game” and “The LEGO Movie” franchises as well as the “Pitch Perfect” films. Her recent credits include the feature “The Beanie Bubble,” the limited series “Mrs. America,” and the feature “Call Jane.” Banks has also been very active as both a producer and director in recent years. She produced all the “Pitch Perfect” films and directed the second of the three. Most recently, she directed the hit horror comedy “Cocaine Bear.” She has also produced projects like the comedy series “Shrill” and the comedy feature “Bottoms.”

She is repped by UTA, Untitled Entertainment, and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole LLP.

“We are so grateful to Tomorrow Studios for supporting us as we’ve explored the world of this family,” said Milch and Corrado. “Craig Gillespie, who tells vital and bold stories of people willing to go to extremes, brought the perfect vision for the series. And we couldn’t feel luckier to have Jessica and Elizabeth, who have awed us with their rich and layered work, as partners bringing these sisters and their secrets to life.”

This is the second time in a matter of weeks it has been reported that Biel will star in a series adaptation of a novel at a streaming service. Variety reported that Biel will also lead the Peacock series “The Good Daughter,” based on the novel by Karin Slaughter. Biel most recently starred in and executive produced the Hulu limited series “Candy.” She has also previously starred in and executive produced shows like “The Sinner” and “Limetown,” while she and Iron Ocean have produced shows such as Freeform’s “Cruel Summer.” Biel is known for her role in the hit WB series “7th Heaven” and for films like “Blade: Trinity,” “The A-Team,” “The Illusionist,” and “Hitchcock.”

She is repped by UTA, LBI Entertainment, The Lede Company, and Yorn Levine Barnes.

“We are ecstatic to be adapting Alafair Burke’s captivating novel into a television series with Prime Video; this has been a true labor of love for the entire team at Tomorrow Studios,” said Marty Adelstein, Tomorrow Studios’ founder & CEO, and Becky Clements, president and partner. “The intricacies of sisterhood at every age are a dynamic we are all excited to explore inside of a taut thriller. It is a privilege to be working with showrunners as talented as Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado on the first project in our new venture with incomparable director and EP Craig Gillespie. We all feel so lucky to have landed Jessica and Elizabeth as our starring sisters and collaborators – a tour de force matchup in this propulsive new series.”

“I’m excited to be re-teaming with Tomorrow Studios on this taut psychological thriller,” added Gillespie. “When I read Olivia and Regina’s propulsive scripts, I knew I wanted to be a part of it, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with these two world class actresses for the first time. Watching them as rivaling sisters is going to be a blast.”

The Apprentice written by Gabe Sherman

VARIETY

Sebastian Stan Transforms Into Young Donald Trump in ‘The Apprentice’ First Look

The first-look image of Sebastian Stan as a young, pre-TV star and pre-president Donald Trump in buzzy upcoming biopic “The Apprentice” has been revealed.

Ali Abbasi’s feature — which has just been announced as part of the 2024 Cannes main competition — charts Trump’s ascent to power through what is described as a “Faustian deal” with the influential right-wing lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn (seen in the still being portrayed by Jeremy Strong). As the synopsis reads, “‘The Apprentice’ is a dive into the underbelly of the American empire.”

The hot button film, written by Gabe Sherman and likely to cause a stir on both sides of the political fence, also stars Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump and Martin Donovan as Fred Trump Sr.

Jarek for Profile Pictures (Denmark), Ruth Treacy and Julianne Forde for Tailored Films (Ireland), Abbasi and Louis Tisne for Film Institute (Denmark). Executive producers are Amy Baer, Mark H. Rapaport, Emanuel Nunez, Josh Marks, Grant S. Johnson, Phil Hunt and Compton Ross, Thorsten Schumacher, Niamh Fagan, Gabe Sherman, Lee Broda and James Shani.

“The Apprentice” joins a buoyant list of titles vying for the Palme d’Or at next month’s Cannes. Also in the running are Francis Ford Coppola’s 20-years-in-the-works magnum opus “Metropolis” starring Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne and Shia LaBeouf; Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness,” a stylized three-part story set in the present that reunites the “Poor Things” helmer with Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe; Paul Schrader’s “Oh Canada” with Richard Gere, based on a screenplay by the late Russell Banks (“Affliction”); Jacques Audiard’s musical melodrama “Emilia Perez” starring Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez; Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” with Gary Oldman; and David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds” starring Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger.

Ushers by Joe Hill

DEADLINE

Screen Gems Lands Rights To Joe Hill’s Short Story ‘Ushers’ With Gary Dauberman Producing

EXCLUSIVE: Sony’s Screen Gems has acquired rights to Ushers, an unpublished short story written by Joe Hill. Under his first look deal with the studio, Gary Dauberman and his team at Coin Operated will develop and produce with Zak Olkewicz set to write the script. Coin Operated’s President, Mia Maniscalco, will also be a producer.

Plot is being kept under wraps. Ashley Brucks and Michael Bitar will oversee for the studio.

Dauberman is currently producing under his Coin Operated banner, alongside Mångata’s David F. Sandberg and Lotta Losten, the film adaptation of Until Dawn from PlayStation Productions and Sony’s Screen Gems, to be directed by Sandberg, and a screenplay written by Dauberman and Blair Butler.

Olkewicz has ties to the studio having penned the adaptation to their hit action pic Bullet Train.

Olkewicz is repped by CAA and 3Arts. Hill is repped by Hotchkiss Daily & Associates. Dauberman is repped by CAA, Industry Entertainment, Felker Toczek Suddleson Abramson McGinnis Ryan,

Stealing The General by Russell S. Bonds

DEADLINE

John Patton Ford Writing To Direct Netflix Drama On Union Spy Whose Hijacking Of Confederate Locomotive Hastened Civil War’s End

EXCLUSIVE: John Patton Ford is writing to direct an untitled film for Netflix with 21 Laps producing. Ford wrote and directed the Aubrey Plaza-starrer Emily The Criminal. Here, he will tell the Civil War story of a Union spy named James Andrews who, with infantry volunteers, conspired to hijack a Confederate locomotive named the General. Racing along at speeds up to 60 MPH, they destroyed track to the main southern supply route behind them and shut down communications by cutting telegraph lines, all to disrupt the Confederacy’s supply line to end the war. The six surviving raiders became the first to receive the Medal of Honor, awarded by Abraham Lincoln. The caper would also be the historical basis for Buster Keaton’s silent film The General.

Ford will write to direct a drama which is based on his idea, and is part of a package that includes Russell Bonds’ seminal Civil War book Stealing the General.

Shawn Levy, Dan Levine and Dan Cohen for 21 Laps, which has Stranger Things with Netflix and the limited series All The Light We Cannot See, with Levy directing all the episodes in the adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning book. The company is also producing the Halle Berry-starrer Never Let Go for Lionsgate, the Netflix limited series The Perfect Couple with Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber, and for Disney+ Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day starring Eva Longoria and George Lopez.

Patton, who will next direct the dark comedy Huntington for Studiocanal and Blueprint Pictures, is repped by CAA, Black Box Management and Yorn Levine Barnes. The book deal was brokered by Hotchkiss Daily & Associates.  

The Apprentice by Gabe Sherman

DEADLINE

‘The Apprentice’: Jeremy Strong And Maria Bakalova Join Sebastian Stan In Donald Trump Pic

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s one you probably didn’t see coming: Sebastian Stan, the Emmy and Golden Globe nominee known for his work in the MCU and the acclaimed Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy, has been tapped for the role of a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, a new film from Cannes prize-winning Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider).

Also aboard the film in major roles are Emmy and Golden Globe winner Jeremy Strong (Succession) and Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3). Production commenced this week.

Billed as an exploration of power and ambition, set in a world of corruption and deceit, The Apprentice will examine Trump’s efforts to build his real estate business in New York in the ’70s and ’80s, also digging into his relationship with infamous attorney Roy Cohn. It’s a mentor-protege story that charts the origins of a major American dynasty. Sources tell Deadline that Strong will play Cohn, with Bakalova as Trump’s first wife, Ivana.

News of the project comes as the former POTUS stands trial in New York for fraud. Although currently under multiple indictments in multiple cases, the twice impeached Trump’s eyeing a return to the Oval Office as the current Republican frontrunner for 2024.

The writer for the Apprentice pic is Gabriel Sherman, whose bestseller The Loudest Voice in the Room inspired Showtime’s miniseries The Loudest Voice, starring Russell Crowe as Fox News founder Roger Ailes. The producers are Daniel Beckerman of Scythia Films, Jacob Jerek of Profile Pictures and Ruth Treacy of Taylored Films. The executive producers are Grant Johnson, Gabriel Sherman and Amy Baer.

One of the most versatile actors of his generation, Stan has already memorably portrayed many a real-life figure — most recently stepping in to the role of Robinhood Markets CEO Vladimir Tenev in Dumb Money, Craig Gillespie’s pic on the GameStop short squeeze of 2021, which was released by Sony in September after premiering at TIFF. He previously drew rave reviews for his turns as Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee opposite Lily James’ Pam Anderson on Hulu’s Pam & Tommy, and broke out with his turn as Jeff Gilooly, the abusive spouse of elite figure skater Tonya Harding, in the Gillespie-helmed I, Tonya. Otherwise best known for his work as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier in projects ranging from Captain America: The First Avenger to the forthcoming Thunderbolts, Stan will next be seen in the A24 thriller A Different Man, which he exec produced and stars in opposite Reinate Reinsve.

Currently on his third Emmy nomination for his stellar lead turn on HBO’s Succession, which wrapped up its fourth and final season over the summer, Strong’s other recent credits include James Gray’s Armageddon Time, Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, and Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen. He’ll also soon be seen starring alongside Michael Imperioli and more in a Broadway revival of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People produced by Plan B. The strictly limited 16-week engagement begins previews at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre on Tuesday, February 27, 2024, and will open Monday, March 18th.

Bakalova will be seen starring opposite Emilia Jones and Scoot McNairy in the Sofia Coppola-produced drama Fairyland, which world premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Other projects in the can for the actress are the sci-fi dramedy O Horizon and Jerry Seinfeld-directed Netflix pic Unfrosted. In development at Paramount is a Paul-Feig helmed spy comedy in which she’s set to star opposite Stan. The actress broke out with her Oscar-nominated turn in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and more recently voiced Cosmo the Spacedog in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

Directing two episodes for the first season of HBO’s smash hit video game adaptation The Last Of Us, Abbasi’s most recent feature, Holy Spider, premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where star Zar Amir Ebrahimi won the award for Best Actress. The serial killer thriller went on to be selected as the official Danish entry for the Best International Feature Oscar and was shortlisted, though not ultimately nominated.

A New York Times bestselling author and special correspondent for Vanity Fair, Sherman has also written and served as a consulting producer on ABC’s crime drama Alaska Daily.

Stan is repped by CAA, Brookside Artist Management, and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern; Strong by WME, Sugar23, and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller; Bakalova by CAA, Brookside Artist Management, Insight Management & Production in the UK, and Yorn, Levine, Barnes; Abbasi by CAA, LARK in the UK, and Entertainment 360; and Sherman by Hotchkiss Daily & Associates and Entertainment 360.

The Black Phone by Joe Hill

DEADLINE

Blumhouse’s ‘The Black Phone 2’ Sets Summer 2025 Release Date

Lots of release dates changes and additions as the theatrical release schedule take a turn due to the ongoing actors strike. Universal Pictures has staked out June 27, 2025 for The Black Phone 2. The first movie, released during the summer 2022 as moviegoers were coming back to cinemas from the pandemic, was a surprise sleeper making over $90M domestic, $161M worldwide.

No creative announcement on this, or whether filmmaker Scott Derrickson is returning.

Blumhouse had this 2025 date RSVP’ed where there’s currently Disney’s live-action Moana dated and a Sony Marvel live-action feature.

Sweet Magnolias by Sherryl Woods

‘Sweet Magnolias’ Renewed For Season 4 By Netflix

Netflix‘s popular romantic drama Sweet Magnolias has been picked up for a fourth season. Like the first three seasons, Season 4 will consist of 10 episodes. The renewal comes three months after Season 3 of Sweet Magnolias debuted on July 20.

The delay in the announcement was due to logistics, including the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, but the pickup was never in doubt as the series continues to draw large, passionate female audiences. Across its three seasons to date, Sweet Magnolias has been in the Global Top 10 for 10 weeks in over 60 countries, with the most recent third season debuting at No. 1.

Still, fans had a mild reason for concern as the Season 3 finale largely wrapped storylines in a nice bow, ending on a dance and a kiss vs. major cliffhangers for the Season 1 and Season 2 enders, including a car crash with lives hanging in the balance and a surprise marriage proposal.

Based on the popular series of novels published by best-selling author Sherryl Woods, Sweet Magnolias follows lifelong best friends Maddie (JoAnna Garcia Swisher), Dana Sue (Brooke Elliott), and Helen (Heather Headley) as they juggle relationships, family, and careers in the small town of Serenity, SC.

Sheryl J. Anderson returns as showrunner and executive producer; Dan Paulson, whose Daniel L. Paulson Productions is producing, also returns as an executive producer, along with Woods.

Sweet Magnolias is part of Netflix’s lineup of “comfort” lighter scripted dramas that also includes originals like Virgin River (renewed for Season 6), The Lincoln Lawyer (renewed for Season 3), Ginny & Georgia (renewed for Seasons 3 and 4) and Firefly Lane, which recently ended its run, as well as popular licensed series such as Suits.

Sweet Magnolias by Sherryl Woods

DEADLINE

‘Sweet Magnolias’ Gets Season 3 Premiere Date At Netflix

Netflix has set July 20 for the Season 3 premiere of Sweet Magnolias, and has released some first-look photos of the upcoming 10-episode season (see above and below).

Based on Sherryl Woods’ popular series of novels, Sweet Magnolias follows lifelong best friends Maddie (Joanna Garcia Swisher), Dana Sue (Brooke Elliott) and Helen (Heather Headley), who are born and raised in Serenity, SC, a small southern town where everybody knows everybody and everybody knows everybody’s business.

Season 2 ended with several cliffhangers. Ronnie and Dana Sue reunited, but mystery-woman Kathy might mean trouble for Dana Sue in the upcoming season. The season also ended with the death of Miss Frances (Cindy Karr) and Maddie, with Helen and Dana Sue in mourning over her passing.

In Season 3, following the brawl at Sullivan’s, Maddie wrestles with the best way to help Cal (Justin Bruening) and works to clear her own emotional path. Helen faces difficult decisions about the men in her life. And Dana Sue searches for a way to use Miss Frances’ check to help the community, without upending her family. The identity of the tire slasher sends shockwaves through Serenity, the recall causes unexpected consequences, and there are romantic surprises in every generation.

Cast also includes Chris Klein (Bill Townsend), Jamie Lynn Spears (Noreen Fitzgibbons), Carson Rowland (Tyler Townsend), Logan Allen (Kyle Townsend), Chris Medlin (Isaac Downey), Anneliese Judge (Annie Sullivan), Brandon Quinn (Ronnie Sullivan) and Dion Johnstone (Erik Whitley).

Sheryl J. Anderson serves as showrunner and executive produces with Dan Paulson and Woods. Norman Buckley and Matt Drake co-executive produce. The series is a Daniel L. Paulson production.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery by Alan Bradley

VARIETY

‘Sherlock’ Star Martin Freeman, ‘The Sandman’ Actor Isla Gie to Headline ‘Flavia de Luce,’ Protagonist to Launch at Cannes (EXCLUSIVE)

Isla Gie (“The Sandman”) will star alongside Martin Freeman (“Sherlock,” The Hobbit”) in the upcoming feature film adaptation of the New York Times bestselling novel “The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery.”

Protagonist Pictures is launching international sales on the family adventure and will introduce to buyers at the upcoming Cannes film market. CAA Media Finance are handling North America.

Adapted by Susan Coyne (“Daisy Jones and the Six”), the film will follow the adventures of 11-year-old Flavia de Luce (Gie), who is both an amateur detective and a master poisoner. When she discovers a dead body in her family’s decaying British manor house and her father is accused of the murder, Flavia launches her own investigation to uncover family secrets and bring the true murderer to justice.

The film will be directed by Emmy and BAFTA-nominated director Bharat Nalluri (“The Man Who Invented Christmas,” “Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day”).

The film is being produced by Paula Mazur and Mitchell Kaplan for The Mazur Kaplan Company and Robert Mickelson for Mystic Point, with Protagonist Pictures CEO Dave Bishop and chief commercial officer George Hamilton serving as executive producers.. The two production companies previously collaborated on “The Man Who Invented Christmas.”

Bishop said: “Flavia is a most charming and resourceful heroine with an insatiable curiosity in her fearless pursuit of the truth and we have no doubt this amateur detective will become a firm family favorite as she jumps from page to screen. Full of mystery, suspense and humor and rounded out with a fantastic cast, this is exactly the type of film audiences are craving for and we are honored to be launching Flavia’s first big screen adventure into the marketplace.”

Alan Bradley’s novel on which the film is based, won numerous awards, including The Debut Dagger Award, The Agatha Award and The Dilys Award. It was named the New York Times Review Favorite Mystery of The Year and was included in Amazon’s Top 10 in Mysteries and Thrillers. The novel is the first in a series of 10 Flavia de Luce mysteries.

Wonder Boy by Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans

Hollywood Reporter

Justin Chon — the actor and filmmaker behind films Blue Bayou and Gook — and Scooter Braun’s SB Projects are developing a feature about the life and career of e-commerce giant and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

Chon and SB Projects have optioned the upcoming biography Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley (out via Henry Holt & Company on April 25) by The Wall Street Journal‘s Angel Au-Yeung and Forbes Magazine’s David Jeans.

Hsieh revolutionized e-commerce with Zappos, the online shoe retailer that offered customers free shipping and returns and put an extreme emphasis on customer service, a then-rare approach to online shopping. Internally, Zappos’ corporate culture was unique even among tech companies, and in 2013, Hsieh made headlines when he announced that the company would eliminate all titles.

he adaptation, according to the project’s description, will follow the life of Hsieh “an American internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist who grew up in Northern California, attended Harvard University and went on to become the CEO of Zappos, moving the world headquarters to Las Vegas where he restored much of the historic downtown and became famous in the tech world for his ‘happiness’ work culture before his tragic death in a mysterious house fire in 2020. He was 46 years old.”

(Hsieh’s died due to injuries suffered in a house fire. At the time, a report released by the New London, Connecticut fire and police investigators said, “It is possible that carelessness or even an intentional act by Hsieh could have started this fire.”)

Along with Chon, Braun, James Shin, and Scott Manson will produce on behalf of SB Projects, which recently released the latest season of FX comedy Dave and is behind the upcoming reggaeton-inspired Netflix feature Neon. Au-Yeung and Jeans will executive produce.

Chon, repped by APA and McKuin Frankel, directed and executive produced the AppleTV+ drama Pachinko and is currently directing the pilot and executive producing the Jason Momoa led AppleTV+ series Chief of War.

The book rights deal was made on behalf of the Ross Yoon Agency by Hotchkiss Daily & Associates.

The House Across The Lake by Riley Sager

DEADLINE

Netflix Acquires Riley Sager Bestseller ‘The House Across The Lake’; Berlanti Productions, Feigco Producing; Paul Feig Eyeing To Direct

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has closed a deal to develop the 2022 bestselling Riley Sager novel The House Across The Lake, developing as a potential directing vehicle for Paul Feig. Pic will be produced by Berlanti Productions and Feigco, with Sarah Schechter, Greg Berlanti and Mike McGrath producing for Berlnti, and Feig and Laura Fischer for Feigco.

Casey Fletcher is a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press. She retreats to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of bourbon, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich, and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.

One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. The more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage isn’t as perfect as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be very deceiving.

Deal for Sager was done by Hotchkiss Daily & Associates on behalf of Michelle Brower at Trellis Literary.

The Residence by Kate Andersen Brower

VARIETY

Shondaland Netflix Series ‘The Residence’ Adds 11 to Cast, Including Andre Braugher, Jason Lee, Bronson Pinchot, Susan Kelechi Watson

The upcoming Shondaland Netflix series “The Residence” has added 11 new cast members, Variety has learned.

The new cast members are: Andre Braugher, Edwina Findley, Molly Griggs, Jason Lee, Ken Marino, Al Mitchell, Dan Perrault, Bronson Pinchot, Susan Kelechi Watson, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Mary Wiseman. The group joins previously announced series lead Uzo Aduba.

The official logline for the series states, “132 rooms. 157 suspects. One dead body. One wildly eccentric detective (Aduba). One disastrous State Dinner. ‘The Residence’ is a screwball whodunnit set in the upstairs, downstairs, and backstairs of the White House, among the eclectic staff of the world’s most famous mansion.”

Braugher (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “The Good Fight”) plays White House Chief Usher. A.B. Wynter. Findley (“The Power,” “The Wire”) plays Sheila Cannon, White House Butler. Griggs (“Dr. Death,” “Servant”) plays Lilly Schumacher, President Morgan’s Social Secretary. Lee (“My Name is Earl,” “Almost Famous”) plays Tripp Morgan, President Perry Morgan’s younger brother and a bit of a screw-up. Marino (“The Other Two,” “Party Down”) plays Harry Hollinger, President Perry Morgan’s oldest friend, closest advisor, and most trusted confidante.

Mitchell (“Stranger Things,” “Ozark”) plays Rollie Bridgewater, Head Butler/Maitre d’. Perrault (“Strays,” “Players”) plays Colin Trask, Head of the Presidential Detail for the Secret Service. Pinchot (“Our Flag Means Death,” “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley”) plays Didier Gotthard, White House Executive Pastry Chef. Kelechi Watson (“This Is Us,” “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) plays Jasmine Haney, a young and rising White House Assistant Usher. Whitlock (“Your Honor,” “The Wire”) plays Larry Dokes, Chief of Police, Metropolitan Police Department. Wiseman (“Star Trek: Discovery,” “Baskets”) plays Marvella, White House Executive Chef.

Paul William Davies is the showrunner and executive producer on “The Residence.” Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers executive produce on behalf of Shondaland via the company’s Netflix overall deal. Davies is also under an overall deal at Netflix. Liza Johnson will direct the first four episodes. The show marks the latest collaboration between Davies and Rhimes. He previously created the ABC legal drama “For the People,” which was produced by Shondaland. He was also a writer on the hit ABC series “Scandal,” which Rhimes created.

Braugher is repped by WME, Viewpoint and attorney Keith Klevan. Marino is repped by Artists First. Perrault is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners and UTA. Mitchell is repped by Jana VanDyke Agency and CSP Management. Wiseman is repped by Gersh and Lighthouse Management & Media. Findley is repped by More / Medavoy Management. Griggs is repped by Paradigm and Perennial Entertainment. Lee is repped by Hansen Jacobson. Pinchot is repped by Artists & Representatives and Bohemia Group. Kelechi Watson is repped by UTA, Authentic Talent & Literary Management, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman. Whitlock is repped by Innovative Artists, Liebman Entertainment, and Schreck Rose.

Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton

VARIETY

Robert Pattinson Awakes From Cryogenic Sleep As Mickey 17

Robert Pattinson’s last space sci-fi film saw the actor playing a prisoner made to serve his sentence on a shuttle hurtling toward a black hole (among other human-rights offenses, including really messed-up sexual harassment). His next space drama? Mickey 17, a Bong Joon Ho joint based on the novel Mickey7, by Edward Ashton, which tells the story of an employee on an expedition to colonize an ice world — but he’s doing it only for the check. The Warner Bros. film, out on March 29, 2024, is currently in production and is written, directed, and produced by the Oscar-winning Parasite director. Not much has been said about the script, but the first look at the film depicts a comatose Pattinson emerging from sleep in what appears to be a cryogenic freezer in what seems like a tricked-out MRI machine in a long, sparse room. Steven Yeun (Minari), Naomi Ackie (I Wanna Dance With Somebody), Toni Collette (Hereditary), and Mark Ruffalo (the Hulk) round out the cast. If Bong’s previous films are anything to go by, Mickey 17 is likely shaping up to be another social thriller that will thaw right in time for the start of 2025’s awards-season race.