EXCLUSIVE: In competition, Apple has landed a multi-year, first-look deal for scripted feature films with Hyperobject Industries, the multi-platform production company from Oscar-winning writer/director/producer Adam McKay.
McKay brings a team that includes his longtime producer Kevin Messick and producers Betsy Koch and Todd Schulman. He formed Hyperobject Industries after McKay, Will Ferrell and Chris Henchy ended their long and fruitful Gary Sanchez partnership back in 2019. McKay has evolved from broad comedies including Step Brothers and Talladega Nights into socially relevant fare that has included The Big Short and Vice and the plan is for McKay and team to generate projects that range from scripted comedies to dramas, horror, documentaries, documentary series and podcasts. McKay most recently completed directing Don’t Look Up, a comedy that tells the story of two low level astronomers (Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) who must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching asteroid that will destroy Earth. McKay and Messick also continue to be Executive Producers on the Emmy-winning series Succession.
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Hyperobject Industries’podcasts include Death At The Wing and Broken: Seeking Justice, and McKay also serves as an executive producer on Q: Into the Storm as well as 537 VOTES. TV projects include the limited series chronicling the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, and a limited series based on Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown’s book Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story, about the notorious sexual predator who was found hanged in his jail cell after previously being given a light sentence for his crimes. McKay and Bong Joon Ho are partnering to develop a limited series inspired by Bong Joon Ho’s Academy Award Best Picture Parasite. In addition, McKay is set to re-team with Amy Adams for the limited series Kings of America.
McKay’s Hyperobject Industries joins a roster of Apple overall and first-look deals that include Martin Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions; DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson’s Appian Way, Idris Elba’s Green Door Pictures; Ridley Scott’s Scott Free; A24; Imagine Entertainment and Skydance Animation. Apple only launched as a content creator in late 2019.
Apple’s upcoming films include CODA, which swept the honors at the Sundance Film Festival; The Tom Hanks-starrer Finch directed by Miguel Sapochnik; Emancipation, the Antoine Fuqua-directed runaway slave thriller that stars Will Smith; the Martin Scorsese-directed Killers of the Flower Moon that stars DiCaprio and Robert De Niro; the Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris’-starrer Swan Song; the A24 film Sharper, which Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka directed starring Julianne Moore; and The Tragedy of Macbeth, the Joel Coen-directed film that stars multi-Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand.
McKay is repped by WME and attorney Matt Johnson at Ziffren Brittenham.
