Academy Award nominee Ryan Gosling is set to star in Universal Pictures’ untitled event film directed by Daniels, the Academy Award-winning filmmaking duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), the studio announced Thursday.
Plot details remain under wraps. Production is expected to begin in Los Angeles this summer.
Kwan, Scheinert and Jonathan Wang will produce through their Playgrounds banner under their overall deal with Universal. Playgrounds’ Kwan and Wang recently produced “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist” from Universal specialty studio Focus Features, set for release in theaters March 27, 2026.
Executive Vice President of Production Development Sara Scott and Director of Production Development Jacqueline Garell will oversee the project for the studio.
Amazon has landed its biggest box office opening ever with Gosling’s “Project Hail Mary,” the Phil Lord/Chris Miller adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling sci-fi novel, which earned $33 million from 4,007 theaters on opening day and grossed $80.5 million last weekend. The film is expected to repeat at No. 1 this weekend.
For Amazon, which became Amazon MGM Studios following its 2021 acquisition of the legacy studio MGM, this surpasses its previous domestic opening of $58.3 million set by “Creed III” in March 2023.
In fact, the only movie that is not a sequel or part of a franchise to post a higher opening weekend than “Project Hail Mary” in the past decade is Universal and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” with $82 million in July 2023.
Gosling is repped by CAA and Sloane, Offer, Weber and Dern. Daniels are repped by Mosaic and Yorn, Levine, Barnes, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich, Goodell & Gellman.
Deadline first reported the news.
