Ryan Reynolds and Oscar winner Kenneth Branagh are set to star in the big-budget action-adventure movie Mayday, which is hardly in distress at Apple Original Films and Skydance.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves filmmakers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley will direct and produce the movie, which is based on their original pitch. The duo managed to finish the script prior to the Writers Strike, as Reynolds actually began circling the project back in April.
Skydance has a first-look deal with Apple, and its principal David Ellison will produce alongside Dana Goldberg and Don Granger, while Reynolds will produce under his Maximum Effort banner alongside Ashley Fox, Johnny Pariseau, and Patrick Gooing. Carin Sage will oversee the project for Skydance, which is keeping plot details under wraps according to Deadline, which broke the news.
There isn’t any start date yet given the ongoing labor unrest throughout Hollywood, which has wreaked havoc on studios’ production schedules. However, the project is considered a priority for Reynolds, who starred opposite Will Ferrell in Apple’s Christmas-themed musical Spirited, which was the streamer’s most-watched original movie ever when it debuted over Thanksgiving. Reynolds also recently starred in Skydance’s sci-fi movie The Adam Project.
Reynolds is currently filming Deadpool 3 for Marvel Studios, while Paramount will release his family-friendly comedy Imaginary Friends — directed by John Krasinski — next year. Paramount just released Goldstein and Daley’s well-reviewed Dungeons & Dragons movie, which served as their follow-up to their acclaimed comedy Game Night. They also wrote the Horrible Bosses movies and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
As for Branagh, he’ll soon be seen in Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer before reprising his role as famed detective Hercule Poirot in A Haunting In Venice, which he also directed. In 2021, Branagh won an Oscar for writing the semi-autobiographical film Belfast, and later this year, he returns to the London stage to play King Lear in a new Shakespeare adaptation that he’ll also direct.
WME represents Reynolds and Branagh, the latter of whom is also repped by Berwick & Kovacik, while Goldstein and Daley are repped by CAA and Fourth Wall Management.
