Author: Deadline

2026 Critics Choice Super Awards winners list: ‘The Boys’ and ‘Widow’s Bay’ top TV as ‘Obsession,’ ‘Superman,’ ‘Project Hail Mary’ and ‘The Furious’ lead film.

EXCLUSIVE: After locking down rights in a major pre-empt prior to publication, Netflix has launched development on a feature adaptation of Deep End, the instant #1 NYT bestselling New Adult romance from The Love Hypothesis‘ Ali Hazelwood. Published in 2025 by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Deep End centers on the steamy college romance between a competitive diver and an ace swimmer jumping into forbidden waters. Laura Kosann has been tapped to pen the script, with Shawn Levy and Dan Levine set to produce via 21 Laps, alongside Alex Cooper and Matt Kaplan from Unwell Productions. Hazelwood will exec produce, alongside Matthew Janzen…

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s the first trailer from The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, which has just been announced as part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Centrepiece program.  The Nigerian film, which will world premiere at TIFF next month, is the feature adaptation of Lola Shoneyin’s internationally acclaimed 2010 novel of the same name. It produced by EbonyLife Films, the film strand of Mo Abudu’s EbonyLife Group, in partnership with Genesis Media Group, Nile Media Entertainment Group, Silverbird Group and Flytime Entertainment.  Set within a seemingly harmonious polygamous household, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives follows Baba Segi, a wealthy patriarch with…

EXCLUSIVE: Stephanie Laing, the two-time Emmy winner behind Apple TV’s Your Friends & Neighbors and the recent true-life Rose Byrne drama Tow, is set to direct Runaway Wedding for Working Title Films, sources tell Deadline. Reps for Working Title declined to comment. Runaway Wedding follows underage lovers Matt and Anna, who elope to the chagrin of their parents, who chase them across the country — and unexpectedly fall in love, themselves. We hear that Laing will work from a script by Adam Brooks, whose credits include the Working Title rom-coms Definitely, Maybe and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, as well as the more recent Netflix pic The Life List. Liza…

Next week, veteran filmmaker Haile Gerima will take his latest feature, Black Lions – Roman Wolves, to the U.S. for its first public screening, following a series of lively showings at the Berlin Film Festival in February.  The five-part, 10-hour documentary film will screen in its entirety across several days at the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia.  Decades in the making, Black Lions – Roman Wolves is a sweeping survey of Italy’s brutal colonial legacy in Ethiopia, told through a complex mix of archival footage and contemporary interviews with eyewitnesses.  Black Lions – Roman Wolves is Gerima’s first feature since…

Richard L. O’Connor, an Emmy-winning TV producer and a studio executive in charge of production on such films as On Golden Pond, The Muppet Movie and Raise The Titanic, died July 22 in Palm Desert. He was 96. His death was announced by his family. A cause was not disclosed. A long-time resident of the Mendocino Coast, O’Connor won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Program for producing the 1989 NBC TV movie A Mother’s Courage: The Mary Thomas Story starring Alfre Woodard. Born in San Francisco with his twin brother Don on January 7, 1930, O’Connor and his twin…

Mahershala Ali is ready to move on from being asked about Blade, the Marvel Studios reboot he was set to star in and suffered multiple setbacks. In a new interview, Ali opened up about being attached to the project that had been in development for years. “Not with me,” Ali told GQ when asked if the Blade reboot was closer to materializing. He continued, “No offense to them. I’ve been doing this professionally for pushing 30 years now, and one thing I’ve learned is that what is for you is for you and what is not is not. For whatever…

EXCLUSIVE: After receiving some of the best reviews of his career on The Odyssey, John Leguizamo and Matt Damon are ready for their next big voyage as sources tell Deadline Leguizamo is in negotiations to join Damon in the untitled event project from filmmaking duo Daniels.  Daniels, aka Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, will write and direct. Sandra Oh, Sean Kaufman, Michael Gandolfini and Charles Melton are also on board. Universal had no comment on the casting. Details on the project remain under wraps. Kwan, Scheinert and Jonathan Wang will produce through their company Playgrounds’ overall deal with Universal. Playgrounds’ Kwan…

EXCLUSIVE: Billy Zane (Titanic), John Billingsley (Unspeakable: The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey), Scottie Thompson (NCIS) and Bonnie Root (Don’t Let Them Out) have signed for writer-director-actor Philippe Caland’s neo noir thriller Milliseconds. The film is billed as a complex mystery about a reclusive former painter who becomes drawn into an investigation involving a suicide hotline, unraveling long-buried connections and hidden truths from the past.   The cast also includes Elijah Lynn Langston, making his feature film debut, and Kevin Ryan (Harry Wild, The Rainmaker), along with Don Wallace and Jason Lee Daniel. Caland will produce under his Junto House Films banner, alongside co-producers Root and Cynthia Bravo, with Zane serving as executive producer. Cinematographer Gonzalo Digenio is…

EXCLUSIVE: After reinventing the dinner party pic with The Invite, Olivia Wilde is looking to get into the holiday spirit for her next directorial outing. Sources tell Deadline Universal Pictures have greenlit her holiday comedy Naughty and tapped Jennifer Aniston and Peter Dinklage to star. The studio also dated the pic for Nov. 5, 2027. Wilde is on board to direct with LuckyChap producing. Naughty follows Mallory (Aniston), whose only hope of securing custody of her son from her gaslighting trash-bag ex is to find Santa Claus (Dinklage) and convince him to testify in her divorce hearing. The film feels like a…