In today’s film news roundup, Hugh Jackman’s thriller gets distribution, Teyonah Parris is heading to the “Candyman” reboot, and SAG-AFTRA pickets in Brentwood.
ACQUISITION
Warner Bros. has acquired worldwide distribution rights to the thriller “Reminiscence,” starring Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson.
Lisa Joy, executive producer of “Westworld,” will make her feature directorial debut on the project. Joy will produce with Kilter Film partner Jonathan Nolan, along with Michael De Luca and Aaron Ryder. Athena Wickham and Elishia Holmes are executive producers.
Principal photography will take place in New Orleans and Miami in October. Jackman will portray a veteran living in a future Miami flooded by rising seas who offers clients the chance to relive any memory. He becomes involved romantically with Ferguson’s character, who is implicated in a series of violent crimes.
FilmNation was selling “Reminiscence” during the Berlin Film Festival. The news was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.
CASTING
Teyonah Parris, whose credits include “Mad Men” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” is in talks to star opposite Yahya Abdul-Mateen in MGM’s reboot of “Candyman.”
Related
Jordan Peele is producing through his Monkeypaw Productions with partner Win Rosenfeld. Universal will distribute the film domestically.
The original 1992 movie adapted the Clive Barker story “The Forbidden” about the murdered son of a slave who has become a supernatural killer. The story, set in a Chicago housing project, followed a graduate student who explores the legend of Candyman while writing a thesis on urban legends.
Abdul-Mateen, who is also in negotiations for the movie, would play an artist obsessed with Candyman and Parris would play his art dealer girlfriend.
PROTEST
SAG-AFTRA members staged picketing on Thursday and Friday in Los Angeles over ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty filming a non-union commercial for its client Samsung.
The protest took place outside a residence on a narrow street in Brentwood, Calif. SAG-AFTRA executive vice president Rebecca Damon and SAG-AFTRA Secretary-Treasurer Jane Austin addressed members and led chants.
SAG-AFTRA struck BBH in September as the result of the agency deciding to that it would no longer honor the union’s commercials contract after 20 years. New York-based BBH has asserted the contract is outdated and too expensive.
SAG-AFTRA members have been instructed not to accept any work for BBH and the union has held dozens of protests against the agency.