Motion Picture: Michael Jackson Biopic likely to be Pushed, Off-Script with Hasan Minaj, Roy wood jr, Jamie foxx and more
Micheal Jackson
Action/Fantasy/Horror/Sci-Fi: Lovie Simone (Forever) has joined the cast of the horror thriller Oddities. The feature film, directed by Tyler Savage, is an expansion of Savage’s 2023 short film of the same name. The cast also includes Adrienne Barbeau (Duster), Xander Berkeley (No Address), and Lilimar Hernandez (Inside Out 2). The film currently does not have a release date.
Michael, Lionsgate's Michael Jackson biopic, is likely to be pushed to 2026. The biopic, directed by Antoine Fuqua, was initially slated for an October 2025 release; however, on a recent earnings call, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said, “It is likely we will move Michael out of the fiscal year.” The film, starring Michael Jackson's nephew Jaafar Jackson in the titular role, is also reported to be facing a split into two films. Jaafar will be supported in his film debut by a stellar cast, including Coleman Domingo (Sing Sing/The Four Seasons), Jessica Sula (Malum/Panic), and Kat Graham (Duplicity).
William Jackson Harper (The Good Place) and Devyn Tyler (Snowfall) have joined The Lives and Deaths of Wilson Shedd. Harper and Tyler will be joining the supporting cast along with Missi Pyle (Ma), Elizabeth Marvel (G20), Grant Harvey (The Accountant 2), and Tim Blake Nelson. Amanda Seyfried (The Dropout) and Scoot McNairy (Speak No Evil) lead the film, which is currently in production in Georgia.
Dwayne Johnson (Red One) will co-star in a new A24 film, Breakthrough. The film will be set in southern California around the year 2000. In it, Johnson will play a morally questionable self-help guru who influences and manipulates the main character. Casting for the Johnsons’ co-star will soon be underway. It will be Johnson’s second outing with A24 following the upcoming film The Smashing Machine, a biopic about Mark Kerr, a former wrestler and MMA fighter; Johnson plays the titular role of Kerr.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (Vemon: The Last Dance/Rob Peace) is in talks to star in A24's The Backrooms. The sci-fi horror film is directed by Kane Parsons and is inspired by Parsons’ viral found footage shorts. Cristin Milioti (How I Met Your Mother/Palm Springs) is also in talks to star alongside Ejiofor.
Ryan Coogler has shut down speculation of a Sinners sequel despite the film’s massive box office success. The director has made it clear he has no interest in doing a sequel. Coogler, who has worked on large franchise films like Black Panther and Creed, told Ebony Magazine, “I wanted the movie to feel like a whole meal: your appetizers, starters, entrées, desserts, I wanted it all there.”
ESPN host Jay Williams will executive produce A Bridge Between, a basketball drama feature, which is based on the true story of Anthony Hodgesas. Williams, a former NBA player, is the CEO of Improbable Media, a media company he launched alongside NBA megastar and former MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. The script was penned by Bobby Verdun and Rob Goodrich, a producer.
Shudder will distribute The Creep, starring Jasmine Jobson (Top Boy/MobLand), in the United States. The film is a reboot of the 2004 film Creep and will be released in 2026. Distribution in England and Ireland is being handled by TruBrit Entertainment, and worldwide by HanWay, which has opted to sell the film’s US rights to Shudder. Much of the original production team from Creep has returned to the reboot, including director Christopher Smith, who also served as the director of the original.
Andrew Koji - Shane Anthony Sinclair / Stringer
Comedy/Dramedy/Musical: Orta, Armani Ortiz’s solo directorial debut, has begun production in Atlanta and Puerto Rico. The film is a new age Latino musical shot in a single continuous take. The ambitious project, spearheaded by Ortiz, is being executively produced by his long-time collaborator and mentor, Tyler Perry. The film stars leading actors Rome Flynn (How to Get Away with murder) and Maria Gabriela De Faria (The Moodys/Deadly Class), with Flores De Alicea (Seashells) and Aria Celeste Castillo (Tyler Perry’s Assisted Living) in supporting roles.
Zoey Luna (Dear Evan Hansen) has finished filming on Slay. The horror dramedy is writer Jimmi Simpson’s scripted feature writing debut and director Kyra Elise Garden’s feature debut. Luna stars alongside Aya Cash (The Boys), and the two will play high school students being hunted and murdered throughout a single weekend. While filming has finished, no release date has been announced for the project.
Andrew Koji (Black Doves/Bullet train), Jason Momoa (A Minecraft Movie/Fast X), Noah Centineo (The Recruit/Warfare), and WWE star Roman Reigns are all currently in talks to join Legendary's Street Fighter. Kitao Sakurai is directing the film, an adaptation of the iconic video game series of the same name. Very few details about the characters or plot are known at this time.
Anna Akana (Antman/A Million Little Things), Rio Mangini (Relish/Wolf Pack), and Warren Egypt Franklin (American Sports Story) have all joined the ensemble cast for Drew Danny’s new comedy, Love and Chaos. Frederick W. Grimm penned the script. The film does not currently have a release date. The ensemble cast will also include Lux Pascal (La Juria), Bebe Wood (Mean Girls) and Christie Taylor (Sweathearts).
Isa Rae (Barbie/American Fiction) is slated to star in and produce Good People, Bad Things, a new comedy film written and directed by Ninian Doff. MRC II Disburtion Company will finance the film, making it the company’s third collaboration with Rae. The cast working alongside Rae is not known at this time.
a24
Documentary: A24 has laid off five people and is shutting down its documentary film division. The studio will finish and release projects currently in production, including Andre Is an idiot and Deathmatch. The studio has cited a challenging market for documentaries as the reason behind its decision.
Sacha Jenkins - Ilya Savenok
Industry: Sacha Jenkins, a hip-hop journalist and documentarian, has passed away at the age of 53. Jenkins was best known for directing Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues, and for founding the hip-hop magazine Ego Trip.
NBA all-star Chris Paul is founding a new production company with his brother, CJ Paul. The duo’s latest venture, Ohh Dip!!! Entertainment is a full-service media production company that will produce scripted and non-scripted content focusing on basketball, sports, and entertainment culture. The pair received an assist from documentary studio Words + Pictures, which will hold a minority ownership stake.
Promise, a generative AI studio, has received backing from Google's AI futures fund. The upstart company also got another boost from The North Road, which increased its previous investments. Promise strives to develop generative AI; the technology creates images and videos, some of which use entirely AI-generated material and others that blend CGI or real-world footage to immerse the viewer. Scenes created with Promise Generative AI were shown off at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The technology is intended to be used alongside more traditional methods.
The crew of Chiper has walked off the Terrance Howard(Iron-Man) film in a strike. Producers failed to agree to a union contract with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees despite having contracts with SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America. The crew felt they were being “treated as less than.” The crew had sought to unionize in order to secure standard pension and health benefits. Original crew members have not worked since Wednesday. However, it is reported that production has attempted to continue with a replacement crew.
In the latest episode of Off-Script from The Hollywood Reporter, six iconic stand-up comedians sat down for a wide-ranging conversation about everything from childhood to the increasingly personal nature of comedy to bringing back Jon Stewart. The conversation opened with how each comedian first stretched their comedic muscles, with Roy Wood Jr. sharing trash talk from the dugout.
“For me, it was Little League baseball, 4th-grade, 5th-grade baseball. I rode the bench; you ride the bench; it’s your job to insult the other team.”
Jamie Foxx shared that his first stand-up specials were in the classroom.
“My grandmother brokered a deal with my third-grade teacher: Let [Jamie] tell jokes at the end of class every Friday, so that’s how I figured it out.”
The conversation then turned towards reactions to jokes and how, in development, they don’t always work out. Roy Wood Jr discussed how the use of politics and current events in comedy is usually more about making the jokes work rather than the nature of the news.
“It’s not so much a political joke as much as it is the early inclinations of the joke, where you haven’t figured out all the live wires are.”
When the conversation turned to the increasingly personal nature of comedy and how much of themselves the comedians chose to share, the discussion became focused on each comedian’s individual style, Minhaj said.
“We’re like musicians in that way; we have a relationship with our audience, so the expectation is different.”
Roy Wood Jr looked at it slightly differently,
There’s so much more of a glut of opinions out there, so my opinion of the world has to be different from what everyone else with a podcast mic has to say.
Roy Wood Jr. shifted the conversation to the nature of political and current event-built sets and the limited nature of what can be done with them against the timeless and relevant nature of personal storytelling through comedy. Silvermen highlighted the timeless nature of personal storytelling. The discussion of that shifting landscape also led to how comedians have to meet that by turning themselves, which led to Hasan Minhaj and the adjustments he made in the face of media criticism.
Hasan went through something extremely unique in terms of character assassination, so what are the jokes that come from that?
Hasan then opened up about the 2023 controversy, in which a reporter from The New Yorker dug into his stand-up specials and accused Minhaj of overly fictionalizing many of the stories he tells on stage. The article and the backlash that followed led to Minhaj losing the Daily Show hosting gig.
I had to go through a comedy audit, which is its own thing, like TurboTax, and make sure you file and bring your receipts. It is very funny to fail so bad that you bring back Jon Stewart, that’s objectively funny.
Jamie Foxx had a very different experience in which to draw comedy from discussing his 2023 stroke and subsequent hospital visit.
I was doing so many jokes in the hospital- that’s the only way I could get through it; I’m a comic. - Jamie Foxx.