Author: Deadline

With the AI discourse spreading in Hollywood, Reese Witherspoon seems intent on making a seat for women at the table. The Oscar winner and Hello Sunshine co-founder recently explained why she’s taken it upon herself to “learn as much as I possibly can about AI,” claiming that women’s jobs are three times as likely to be automated by AI. “We don’t want to be left behind. So…do you want to learn with me?” Witherspoon captioned a video in part. “I think it’s time to learn about AI,” she prefaced in the clip. “I was with about 10 women at a…

EXCLUSIVE: Longtime Disney exec Brigham Taylor (The Jungle Book, 2016), indie producer Dave Hunter (Nitro Circus: The Movie), former SPC, Samuel Goldwyn and Epix exec Ian Puente and indie producer Tom Goodall have joined forces to launch Utah-based InTension Industries, a production company focused on thrillers and genre projects. Taylor, a former executive at Disney Motion Pictures, produced the Jon Favreau-directed The Jungle Book and Christopher Robin, and most recently the indie feature Tokyo Cowboy. Puente previously held executive roles at Sony Pictures Classics, Samuel Goldwyn Films and Epix, where he worked across legal, business affairs, and acquisitions on a…

Paramount on Thursday released the official trailer for Street Fighter, the Kitao Sakurai-directed adaptation of the classic Capcom video game. The studio rolled out the ambitious-looking footage ahead of its presentation at CinemaCon, where it will show off the pic to cinema execs this morning ahead of its October 16 release in theaters. Andrew Koji, Noah Centineo, Jason Momoa, Roman Reigns and Orville Peck are among the tough guys leading the charge in the movie, based on the game. Launched in 1987, Street Fighter is a series of fighting games revolving around intense one-on-one battles between a diverse cast of martial artists.…

EXCLUSIVE: South Africa-set action-comedy Boyz Trip has added Osas Ighodaro (Tinsel), Woody McClain (Power Book II: Ghost), Hakeem Kae-Kazim (Hotel Rwanda), record producer and songwriter Honorable C.N.O.T.E. and Peter Lee (Invasion). They join the previously announced Rome Flynn, Algee Smith, Desi Banks and Siv Ngesi to round out the cast of the movie directed by Kyle Scott. Emmy-nominated composers Kareem James and Marcus Ash have also joined. The story is by Scott, who will also executive-produce for KeyScott Entertainment and Canyon View Media, with Autumn Bailey-Ford producing for Autumn Bailey Entertainment. The film is currently shooting in Cape Town, South Africa.  Additional announced international cast includes Ama…

Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro has confirmed layoffs affecting up to 1,000 employees in the company’s streamlined marketing and brand organization. The top exec, who was officially named Bob Iger’s successor in February, conveyed the news to employees Tuesday in a memo. (Read it in full below.) Word of the cutbacks surfaced last week and reflect consolidation in the company’s marketing areas. In January, the company upped veteran exec Asad Ayaz to Chief Marketing and Brand Officer, after announcing a plan to consolidate marketing at the film, TV and streaming operations and eliminate duplication. The moves could affect as many as 1,000…

In this life, you can rest assured there will be taxes, death, and there will be more over-adrenalized filings in the long legal battle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni over the making of It Ends With Us and the digital blast radius that allegedly followed. Now, less than six weeks before the trial in Lively’s recently trimmed multi-million dollar case against her IEWU co-star/director and his Wayfarer Studios brass kicks off on May 18 in federal court in New York City, the docket is filling up fast. In one particular instance, with retaliation, breach of contract, and aiding and abetting…

It’s a big week for Barbie Ferreira, who delivers powerful leading performances in two drastically different new movies. With horror reimagining Faces of Death now in theaters, and music-driven romantic comedy Mile End Kicks premiering April 17, the actress spoke to Deadline about “spreading my wings” after leaving Euphoria back in 2022. “It just felt like for me, what I wanted to do is act and be able to do different roles, and if Euphoria was going to serve that for me, I would have happily done it forever, however long it would have been,” she explained. “But It wasn’t…

With the second season of Apple TV and Hello Sunshine’s The Last Thing He Told Me drama series drawing to a close today, it only made sense that Deadline got to chat via phone with Lauren Neustadter, President of Film & TV at Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine, about more upcoming shows — book adaptations and not — as well as films in the works, from production on The Nightingale set in Budapest earlier this week. The Tristar feature adaptation of Kristin Hannah’s best-selling novel is another project that took time to pull together with a deal first put…

Vertical has acquired U.S. rights in an early pre-sale deal to Oscar-nominee Andrew Niccol’s crime thriller Lords of War from Oscar-winning studio Vendôme Pictures (CODA), who produced and financed the film. Vertical will show off the pic’s footage at CinemaCon next week in Las Vegas, ahead of a planned 2027 theatrical release. The sequel to the 2005 movie, Lord of War, which starred Oscar winner Nicolas Cage, sees the actor reprising his role as Yuri Orlov, the world’s most notorious arms dealer. When Yuri discovers he has a son, Anton (Bill Skarsgård), a ruthless mercenary mastermind bent on surpassing his…

Paramount Skydance confirmed that its former president Jeff Shell exited the company on April 8 and outlined in a SEC filing how much he will be leaving with. His cash severance will equal the sum of his salary and target bonus, Par said, or about $5 million, according to his employment agreement unveiled last August when Skydance and Paramount merged. That contract set an annual base salary of $3.5 million and a $1.5 million bonus. Par said today the salary and bonus would be payable “in substantially equal installments in accordance with the Company’s regular payroll practices during the period…