EXCLUSIVE: The movie business is on a much needed hot streak. How the momentum impacts two plum packages remains to be seen. One of them, the feature adaptation of the video game adaptation Split Fiction, has Wicked helmer Jon M. Chu attached to direct what will be another two-hander with female leads. Sydney Sweeney is one of them, and Paul Wernick & Rhett Reese are the writers. They are the scribes behind Deadpool & Wolverine, the Deadpool and Zombieland films. Not surprisingly after the smash results of the screen adaptation of the Minecraft vidgame, bids are high and a deal is getting close. I’ve heard bid numbers in the multiple millions from Sony and Amazon MGM, with the latter in strong position to take it off the table, and it will likely be settled by early next week.
More intriguing is Deeper. I’ve heard that Ana de Armas is poised to join Tom Cruise in this undersea supernatural film that Doug Liman will direct. De Armas is the new wrinkle here; they’ve been photographed together recently, and I’m told they are doing the diving training required for the project.
Deeper follows an astronaut who encounters a terrifying force while on a deep dive into a never-before-explored trench. Pic has been in development for almost a decade, originally set at MGM in April 2016, which bought a Max Landis spec. I’ve heard Christopher McQuarrie is involved with the script now. Originally, Bradley Cooper was to star, with Kornél Mundruczó directing; Idris Elba and filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur teamed on a later iteration that likewise failed to move forward.
This one is expensive, in the $200 million range most likely, and it proved too rich for Warner Bros blood. But Cruise crushed the Croisette this week with the final installment of Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning, a film expected to do $70M or more on its five day opening weekend, hopefully on a blockbuster path. De Armas also has momentum, as her John Wick spinoff Ballerina is tracking at $40 million+. While he, Liman and McQuarrie have plans to shoot a narrative film in space with cooperation from NASA and SpaceX, I’m told that Cruise would like to make this one next and it’s not a question of if, but where he decides to make it. No comment from his camp.
Stay tuned.
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