Exclusive: Glen Powell's Barnstorm Banner Lines Up Four New Projects at Universal, Sony, Legendary, and DWA

Happy Friday, folks!

On Wednesday night, I started watching Margo’s Got Money Troubles, which is under embargo until mid-April, but which I nonetheless plan to finish this weekend.

Last night, I went to the Grove to see Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! and I could barely believe my eyes — the movie was atrocious. No wonder WB’s Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy kicked that $90 million can down the road as far as they could. Another year of post-production wouldn’t be enough time to fix all the problems in this movie, which is not only obnoxious but stunningly inept.

Gyllenhaal should be able to rebound from this, but she’ll have to do so with a low-budget indie movie, as I can’t imagine she’ll see a budget the size of The Bride!’s again anytime soon.

Jessie Buckley should thank her lucky stars this movie is opening after the close of Oscar voting, as it might have been enough to bring down her entire Best Actress campaign for Hamnet. She’s unhinged in The Bride! — and not in a good way!

The Bride! is shaping up to be DOA at the box office, where it’ll be lucky to open to double digits. It’s going to be crushed by Pixar’s Hoppers, which is slated to open north of $40 million. And you can expect a big drop of at least 60% for Scream 7 due to terrible word of mouth.

Meanwhile, are you watching my incredible podcast, The Hot Mic? Not only did I tip the news that Parker Finn probably won’t be back for Smile 3, which is nonetheless in the works at Paramount, but I also hinted that the new Lord of the Rings movie is expected to launch a trilogy at New Line. I also reported that the animated Ghostbusters movie is expected to be called Ecto, and it’ll be told from the perspective of a ghost, while the animated Ghostbusters series takes place in the early 90s as the dastardly Walter Peck runs for mayor. Pretty interesting, huh?

Regarding the week in AI, Netflix spent untold millions to acquire Ben Affleck’s AI company InterPositive, which is aimed at helping filmmakers save time and money on VFX and post-production — typically 20-25% of a project’s budget.

Aakash Gupta gave the streamer credit for walking away from an $83 billion deal for Warner Bros. (a legacy media company) to invest in technology that could save them $400 million to $700 million a year, if InterPositive can save Netflix just 10-15% on the $4-5 billion it spends on VFX and post-production each year, based on the idea that the streamer’s annual content budget is $20 billion. Such an acquisition changes the math on every piece of content Netflix produces going forward.

Meanwhile, across town, Seth MacFarlane is using AI to turn himself into Bill Clinton and call someone a “dog’s vagina.” As disturbing as this deep fake is, I’ll admit, I laughed…

Anyway, tonight’s top story concerns Glen Powell’s production company, Barnstorm, and a handful of new projects it has in the works around town. Juicy stuff here, trust me…

There are also items about Daisy Edgar-Jones’ new video game movie, Chris Pine’s new survival thriller, Jake Gyllenhaal’s latest Amazon MGM project, the supporting cast of the new Exorcist movie, the new lifeguards of Baywatch 2.0, the streaming release date for the Melania documentary, and a look at the trailer for HBO’s new DC series, Lanterns, starring Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre.

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