Octavia Spencer Inks Development Deal With ID, Discovery+ & October Films; Sets First Projects

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorFast-rising 18-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter Lauren Spencer-Smith has inked with both Warner Chappell Music publishing and longtime Shawn Mendes manager Andrew Gertler’s AG Artists in partnership with Ziggy Chareton, Variety has confirmed. The news was first published in Hits.A native of Vancouver Island, the singer’s confessional, intimate songs like “Fingers Crossed” and her latest single “Flowers” have effectively set her on a track to be this year’s Olivia Rodrigo.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentNetflix and ‘Spencer’ director Pablo Larraín have gone into production on “El Conde,” a black comedy picturing bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire.Larraín will share screenwriting credits with Guillermo Calderón, Chile’s foremost playwright and Larraín’s writing partner on “Neruda” and Berlin Grand Jury Prize winner “The Club,” the movie which persuaded Natalie Portman to play the lead in the Larraín-directed “Jackie.”“El Conde” is produced by Juan de Dios Larraín at Fabula, the Larraín brothers’ Chile-based film-TV production house whose credits include “Spencer” and “Jackie,” all Larrain’s Chilean movies, and Sebastian Lelio’s 2018 Academy Award winning “A Fantastic Woman.” Moving from fest-winning straight-arrow arthouse fare such as “Tony Manero” to movies with a wider audience appeal from 2012 Cannes Directors Fortnight winner “No,” starring Gael García Bernal and then into English-language titles from “Jackie,” Pablo Larrain has established himself in the vanguard of Latin American cinema.Whatever the setting, his movies combine an acute sense of character and big ideas, on power dyanamics, the fate of women in traditional worlds, the lure and hell of fame and also the multiple hostages left to fortune by Augusto Pinochet’s far right and bloody dictatorship.In a review of “Jackie” Variety’s Guy Lodge hailed Larraín as “the most daring and prodigious political filmmaker of his generation,”“El Conde” looks to drive deeper into some of the themes, mixing character analysis, drama and comedy and a trenchant analysis of the makings of the modern world – not only in Chile but in global terms.The historical black comedy revolves around Augusto

Apple TV+ has given an eight-episode series order to a one-hour drama inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edith Wharton’s unfinished final novel The Buccaneers, with Kristine Froseth (The Assistant), Alisha Boe (When You Finish Saving The World), Josie Totah (Saved by the Bell), Aubri Ibrag (Dive Club), Imogen Waterhouse (The Outpost) and Mia Threapleton (Shadows) cast as the buccaneers.

K.J. Yossman Kristine Froseth and Alisha Boe are set to star in an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s final novel, “The Buccaneers,” for Apple TV Plus.Froseth, who has previously appeared in “The Assistant,” will play Nan St George while Boe, who had a central role in “13 Reasons Why,” is set to play Conchita Closson.Rounding out the cast as the buccaneers are Josie Totah (“Saved by the Bell”) as Mabel Elmsworth, Aubri Ibrag (“Dive Club”) as Lizzy Elmsworth, Imogen Waterhouse (“The Outpost,” “Nocturnal Animals”) as Jinny St.

EXCLUSIVE: Australian actor Sam Delich, who is currently appearing in Netflix’s Joseph Kosinski feature Spiderhead, has landed a major recurring role on Disney+’s comedy-drama series Last Days of the Space Age.

EXCLUSIVE: Jamie Lee Curtis and Blumhouse are developing Lizzie Johnson’s book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle To Survive an American Wildfire, as a feature film. They will also take stories of bus driver Kevin McKay and school teacher Mary Ludwig who helped navigate a bus full of children through a deadly wildfire to fully develop the story. Described as a tour de force, the book is the definitive firsthand account of California’s Camp Fire, the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century and examines what went wrong and how to avert future tragedies as the climate crisis unfolds.

K.J. Yossman Director James Marsh is set to direct a new hybrid animated documentary feature for Submarine and Sandpaper Films.“Oasis, Saving the Baghdad Zoo” (working title), is a feature-length animated documentary partly based on “Babylon’s Ark,” the book about a year-long rescue mission of animals abandoned across Baghdad by Saddam Hussein and his son Uday.Billed as a 21st century Noah’s Ark, the film will show how a team of American soldiers, Iraqi zookeepers, and international volunteers tended to lions, camels, bears, exotic birds, monkeys, pigs and even an ocelot in the middle of a brutal war, risking their own lives in the process.

EXCLUSIVE: BCDF Pictures has acquired film rights to Elena Armas’ 2022 New York Times bestseller The Spanish Love Deception, tapping Peter Hutchings (The Hating Game) to adapt it for the big screen.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorTubi snared a multiyear deal with Lionsgate to be the exclusive ad-supported VOD streaming service for 30 feature films.The agreement encompasses titles not covered under Lionsgate’s Pay 1 theatrical output agreement with Starz, the cable and streaming provider that Lionsgate is in the midst of spinning off. Under the agreement, Tubi, which is part of Fox Entertainment, also will add more than 200 Lionsgate library titles to the free service.Among the Lionsgate films covered under the deal are: erotic thriller “Shattered,” starring John Malkovich, Frank Grillo, Cameron Monaghan and Lily Krug (currently streaming on Tubi); cop drama “Pursuit,” starring John Cusack and Emile Hirsch (coming to the service on June 27); and “Wolf Hound,” about a Jewish-American pilot shot down behind Nazi lines during World War II, starring Trevor Donavan, James Maslow and Michael Wayne Foster (streaming on Tubi in the fall of 2022).

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMusic Box Films has acquired North American rights to “Rodeo,” the bold feature debut of Lola Quivoron which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes where it won the Coup de Cœur du Jury special prize. Produced by Charles Gillibert (“Annette”) at CG Cinema and represented by Les Films du Losange, “Rodeo” stars newcomer Julie Ledrue a Julia, a hot tempered and fiercely independent young woman who infiltrates an underground dirt bike community in France.After a chance meeting at an urban ‘Rodeo,’ Julia finds herself drawn into a clandestine and volatile clique and striving to prove herself to the ultra-masculine group, but is she is faced with a series of escalating demands that will make or break her place in the community.

EXCLUSIVE: Former Warner Bros. Development Executive Paul Perez has inked a production deal at the Burbank, CA lot.

Emily Longeretta UCP and Littleton Road are developing “Vanderbilt,” a new series based on Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe’s book, “Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty.”Patrick Macmanus, “Dr. Death” showrunner and “The Girl From Plainville” co-creator, will write and executive produce the project.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV EditorBBH Entertainment, the entertainment development arm of creative agency BBH USA, said it named producer and development executive Ali Fazel as its new senior vice president and head of development and current programming.Fazel will report toAmani Duncan, CEO of BBH USA, and  and Rafa Rizuto, chief content officer.  Fazel will lead BBH Entertainment’s development of premium entertainment content, both branded and unbranded, for  television, feature films, documentaries and more.BBH Entertainment is behind “Exposure,” a competition series crafted for mobile devices and developed in a creative partnership between BBH Entertainment and their client Samsung. Fazel served as an executive producer on the program.

Wilson Chapman editorThe “A League of Their Own” Amazon series based on Penny Marshall’s popular 1992 comedy film will premiere Aug. 12.Amazon announced the news via a first look teaser, set to the classic Stevie Nicks song “Edge of Seventeen.” The teaser can be seen below.Both the show and film version of “A League of Their Own” take place in 1943, the year that the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was formed.

EXCLUSIVE: The International Documentary Association has added three new board members and hired a director of development.

Tara McNamara Few people weren’t dreaming of travel in August 2020, arguably the most stir-crazy moment of the COVID-19 quarantine, with tensions boiling over after a divisive election and widespread protests, all while wildfires threatened the West Coast.Mike White, for one, funneled the escapist fantasy into the ugly reality of the beautiful people, translating the moment’s tensions and the zeitgeist into “The White Lotus,” a dark comedy about affluent Americans on holiday at a luxurious Hawaiian resort and the staff who cater to them. Moving as fast as the flames raging around Southern California at the time, White wrote the pilot for the six-episode HBO limited series near the end of the summer before heading to Hawaii to begin prepping production.