Netflix Snags Adult Thriller Spec From Michael Werwie; Jason Bateman, Michael Costigan Aboard To Produce For Aggregate Films

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has locked down rights to an untitled adult thriller spec from Michael Werwie (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile), with Jason Bateman and Michael Costigan set to produce for Aggregate Films, sources tell Deadline.

Plot details are under wraps. Falling under Aggregate’s first-look deal with Netflix across film and TV, the sale comes at a busy time for the company, which most recently set up comedy The Chaperone at the streamer, as a potential star vehicle for Bateman. Recently bringing in Amblin vet John Buderwitz to serve as VP of Film, the company also last summer teamed with Netflix in a bidding war over David Gauvey Herbert’s 2021 Esquire magazine article “Daddy Ball,” which is being developed as a limited series for Bateman to direct, star in, and co-EP alongside Costigan and Roxie Rodriguez.

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The project comes to Netflix following Werwie’s scripting and exec producing and Costigan’s producing of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Joe Berlinger drama starring Zac Efron as Ted Bundy, which made its way to the streamer after premiering at Sundance 2019. In addition to that script, which won a Nicholl Fellowship and made the Black List in 2012, Werwie previously wrote Netflix’s crime mystery Lost Girls, starring Amy Ryan as a Long Island mother in search of her missing daughter. Directed by Liz Garbus, that title also bowed out of Sundance.

Founded by Bateman in 2012, Aggregate most recently produced the acclaimed Apple TV+ miniseries Lessons in Chemistry, an adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’s same-name novel starring Brie Larson, which has been recognized with nominations at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, and elsewhere. Previously, the company has also put out such acclaimed shows as Ozark, Based on a True Story, Under the Banner of Heaven, A Teacher, The Outsider and Kidding, among others.

On the film side, the company most recently saw the release of Netflix rom-com Your Place or Mine, starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, which spent four weeks in the streamer’s Globe Top 10 Films (English), reaching the Top 10 Films in a total of 92 countries. Aggregate/AGC’s romantic thriller Hit Man, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Glen Powell, bows on the platform on June 7 after premiering in Venice. Also coming up for release is the horror comedy Hell of a Summer, marking the directorial debut of Stranger Things‘ Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, which bowed out of TIFF last fall.

Werwie is represented by UTA, Link Entertainment, Ellipsis Entertainment, and Lichter, Grossman, Nichols; Aggregate Films by CAA, Lighthouse Management & Media and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.

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