Daniels and Ryan Gosling couldn’t make a deal.
The Project Hail Mary star’s casting in the Oscar winning filmmaker’s untitled event film has been grounded, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. As first reported by Deadline, it is being chalked up to scheduling conflicts as the project, which secured a tax credit in California, was not able to shift from its targeted summer start with a release date already on the calendar for Nov. 19, 2027.
The film falls under an overall deal with the studio for Daniels’ Playgrounds banner with their longtime producing partner Jonathan Wang, and it marks the duo’s follow-up to the pop culture phenomenon that was Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won seven Academy Awards including best picture, best director and best original screenplay for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. It also was a box office juggernaut, earning $143 million on a $25 million budget.
The casting was seen as a coup considering Gosling is riding high off the red hot debut of Project Hail Mary for Amazon MGM Studios, which opened at No. 1 at the global box office, potentially launching a new franchise for him and the studio.
Per Universal, plot details remain under wraps for Daniels’ new film, though in an interview with Collider at SXSW, Kwan revealed some broad strokes about it by calling it a “fun sci-fi, action comedy with a big heart. Very existential. All those things that you would hope that one of our movies would be.” He added that the film will also meet the moment of a “complex” world. “One of the reasons why it’s taking so long is because what we’re feeling and what we’re hearing from the world is very complex and really nuanced, and there’s so much paradox. To kind of reconcile all those things and put them into one movie, it takes time,” he said.
The film will also feature an ensemble made up of younger talent, with one source indicating it could be be in the zone of high school ages. Kwan, Scheinert and Wang are producing through their Playgrounds banner. Universal’s executive vp of production development Sara Scott and director of production development Jacqueline Garell are overseeing the project for the studio.
Gosling next stars in Disney’s Star Wars: Starfighter.
