The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
Rambling Reporter
Halle Berry Goes Down With
It didn’t set off nearly the online uproar as did Warner
Bros.’ decision to dynamite its $70 million Coyote vs.
Acme action-animation hybrid, but another high-profile movie was recently, much more quietly, dumped. Netflix has grounded The Mothership,a Halle Berry sci-fi thriller directed by Oscar-nominated Bridge of Spies co-writer
Matt Charman. The $40 million project started filming during the pandemic in 2021 and ran into one snafu after another — scheduling conflicts, reshoots, strikes and, most recently, continuity issues brought on by growth spurts among some of the children in its cast. During a Jan. 31 news conference, Netflix content chief Bela Bajaria cited “lots of production issues and story issues” for shelving the movie and insisted that “everybody just felt like it was the right thing to just not do it.” A source tells THR, however, that there may have been another reason Mothership
got axed: Its biggest champion, film exec Lisa Nishimura,
abruptly departed last year during a C-suite reshuffling, leaving the project marooned without a benefactor. Berry, of course, will be fine; she’ll be starring in another Netflix film, The Union, a spy caper due in August. Charman will be OK, too. He’s found a gig as a showrunner for In the Room, a Netflix series that enters production this year.
Amy Sherman-Palladino’s Plans for Rachel Brosnahan? ‘I’ll Grab Her Ass’
Married The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino are bringing several familiar faces from that show to their next Prime Video project, the ballet-centric series Étoile. Among them are Luke Kirby, who played Lenny Bruce in Maisel, and Gideon Glick, who had a small role as the magician Alfie.
The Mothership
— Mrs. Maisel herself — may be a much tougher get; she was recently cast as Lois