Warner Bros Wins Massive ‘Calamity Hustle’ Bidding Battle; Ryan Reynolds, Channing Tatum Star, Adam & Aaron Nee To Direct Action Comedy

Mike Fleming Jr
·3 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has won a weeklong auction for Calamity Hustle, an action comedy that will star Ryan Reynolds and Channing Tatum. Adam & Aaron Nee wrote the script, and they will direct. All the studios were in on this, but it came down to Amazon, Netflix and Warner Bros. Led by production chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, Warners stepped up for the kind of star-driven movie that fueled the studio’s fortunes back in the day.

The spec is likened in tone to the mismatched buddy actioner like Lethal Weapon, and the hope is to launch a franchise. Reynolds will play a cop who is estranged from his low-level criminal brother (Tatum). They grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, and went in the opposite direction. When bro is implicated as part of a diamond heist, the cop must hunt him down before those he ripped off.

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The film will shoot in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It will be set around the holiday season — it worked for Lethal Weapon and Die Hard — and there will be big action set pieces. There was speculation about budget when the package was first floated; sources said the hope is to deliver it for $140 million. The stars will make in the $25 million range guaranteed, with strong backends. Like I said, Warner Bros stepped up.

Kevin J. Walsh (Napoleon) is producing through the Walsh Company, along with Tatum’s Free Association and Reynolds’ Maximum Effort, and the Nee’s Persons Attempting, which is run by John Will. Free Association’s Reid Carolin and Peter Kiernan are also producing.

It looked for days like this was going to be another pricey package gobbled by a streamer, but Warner Bros’ rallying might signal a change in these auctions. Streamers would pay higher than a traditional theatrical studio could, but the game is changing, and more filmmakers are demanding theatrical releases for films like Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon, before they land on streaming sites. A theatrical release with a P&A spend if anything establishes these movies in the pop culture, where many streaming-only films come and go with limited awareness because there’s no P&A. But streamers won’t want to pay the premiums for those films, preferring to share with the studio collecting the distribution fee.

The Nee Brothers reunite with Tatum from the action comedy hit The Lost City, and the duo will put this project over Masters of the Universe at Amazon, and the next Lego movie at Universal. Both of these were in the $175M-$200M range, but they wanted to work on something new that they hatched, rather than work on pre-existing IP.

The Nees are repped by CAA, LBI and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole; Tatum is with CAA and Hansen Jacobson, and Reynolds WME and Sloan Offer.

This is one of the last of the giant pre-holiday talent-attached packages, and nearly all the studios end up with major slate additions under the holiday tree.

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