DEADLINE
‘Wasteman’s Cal McMau Teaming With ‘Ozark’s Bill Dubuque On Netflix True Crime Pic ‘The Brotherhood’; Rideback Producing
EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has enlisted Ozark‘s Bill Dubuque to write and Wasteman helmer Cal McMau to direct The Brotherhood, a feature adaptation of the 2006 true-crime book The Brotherhoods: The True Story of Two Cops Who Murdered for the Mafia by Guy Lawson and William Oldham.
The film is based on the shocking true story of a young NYPD detective in the late 1980s who uncovers a conspiracy linking the remnants of the infamous mafia Five Families to the highest levels of the police force.
Rideback’s Jonathan Eirich will produce, along with Mark Bauch of One Day’s Walk, with Rideback’s Nick Reynolds executive producing. Sources said The Brotherhood has been in development for some time, moving to Netflix from Warner Bros. about a year ago, and that the screenplay by Dubuque has been a consistent talent magnet for the project. Stay tuned for more on casting.
McMau is coming off his debut feature, Wasteman, a crime thriller starring David Jonsson and Tom Blyth that world premiered at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. In the film, penned by Hunter Andrews and Eoin Doran, Jonsson plays Taylor, whose hopes for a fresh start are jeopardized by the arrival of his cellmate Dee, played by Blyth. As Dee takes Taylor under his wing, a vicious attack tests their bond, forcing Taylor to choose between protecting Dee and his own parole chances. Pic was nominated for five British Independent Film Awards, with McMau winning Best Debut Director.
McMau began his career as an artist before stepping into animation and motion graphics for television. He spent the last 15 years as a prolific music video director while simultaneously creating a series of award-winning short films, which led to the development of his debut script.
A three-time Emmy nominee best known for creating the hit Netflix series Ozark, Dubuque also notably penned the Accountant films starring Ben Affleck, the second of which recently grossed over $103 million worldwide on its way to becoming Amazon MGM Studios’ second-most-watched film of all time on streaming. Upcoming, he’s set to reteam with Gavin O’Connor — the director of those films — on Running, a film he penned for Apple in which a running prodigy on the hunt for greatness uses his gifts to outrun his past and forge his future. Recently, Dubuque also wrote on and executive produced His & Hers, Netflix’s thriller limited series starring Jon Bernthal and Tessa Thompson, based on the Alice Feeney novel of the same name.
Coming off of Disney’s Dean Fleischer Camp-helmed Lilo & Stitch, the highest-grossing live-action film of 2025 which grossed more than $1 billion worldwide in a moment when such an accomplishment is increasingly rare, Rideback’s next feature is the Netflix Bollywood comedy Best of the Best, starring Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priyanka Kedia.
McMau and Dubuque are both represented by WME. McMau is also repped by Curtis Brown Group and Ziffren Brittenham.