Motion Picture: Lionsgate Expands Runway AI Deal As DGA Secures New Director Protections
Action/Thriller/Sci-fi: Teyonah Parris (No Good Deed) is set to round out the cast of Craig Zobel’s thriller, Turpine. While character details are currently under wraps, production is underway in Atlanta, Georgia. Previously announced cast includes Connor Storrie (Heated Rivalry), Melissa McCarthy (Gilmore Girls) and Bill Camp (Presumed Innocent). The script was penned by Justin Varava and made its way onto the 2024 Black List. Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman’s T-Street and Shivani Rawat’s ShivHans Pictures are producing. “Parris is coming off of Netflix’s No Good Deed and will be seen in Apple, Skydance and Mattel’s Matchbox: The Movie. She is repped by CAA and Fox Rothschild.”
Naomi Ackie is in final talks to star in David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows sequel They Follow at Neon. Ackie would be starring opposite the returning Maika Monroe, but reps at Neon did not confirm the casting and could not be reached for comment. According to representatives “They Follow is eyeing a summer start. News of Ackie’s talks for the film comes ahead of… Mitchell’s latest feature,The End of Oak Street, starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor.”
Pawan Kalyan’s They Call Him OG 2 has been confirmed, shooting will begin in November of 2026. The Indian actor-politician will reprise his role in the sequel and continue his collaborative relationship with director Sujeeth. The production house addressed the timeline directly on X. “As promised, he will. The timing, he will let us know. Once @Sujeethsign returns from abroad, we will discuss,” the post stated. The film follows Ojas Gambheera, a retired gangster who resurfaces in Bombay in 1993 after a decade in exile to confront a rising crime lord, Omi Bhau. Produced by DVV Entertainment, it grossed $35 million, emerging as the ninth-highest-grossing Indian film of 2025.
Drama: Andrew Holland (Moonlight) and Wendell Pierce (The Wire) and Samire Wiley (The Handmaid’s Tale) to star in the new Hulu movie They Fight based on the 2018 documentary of the same name. They Fight follows the “real-life Walt Manigan (Holland), an ex-con who … finds himself coaching a D.C.-based team of teen boxers who aspire to compete for the national championship.” The film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival on Monday June 8, 2026 and will have its streaming debut on Hulu July 17, 2026. Writer-director Sheldon Candis is at the creative forefront of the film, “They Fight is my love letter to one of my all-time favorite directors John G. Avildsen,” says Candis about the Oscar-winning director of Rocky and the original Karate Kid trilogy. Candis added: “Andre Holland plays the real life character of Walt Manigan within this documentary adaptation of a man searching to reclaim his soul.” The script was written by Andrew Renzi with Anthony B. Jenkins, Toussaint Francois Battiste and Mykelti Williamson rounding out the cast.
Patrick Walker and Briana Price star in the action-crime drama Crowbarfrom director Jordan Tortorello. The film follows the story of “Levi (Walker), a struggling actor who lands the lead role in ‘Bradshaw’ — a psychological war drama shot inside his own home. As the crew invades his space and a volatile director (Pyper-Ferguson) pushes him to his limits, the line between Levi and his character dissolves.” This will be Tortorello’s directorial debut. He will also be producing under his production banner MixedMedia.Brad Rundblade and Patrick Walker, who wrote the film with Tortorello, are also producers. Filming has wrapped in Burbank, California. “Crowbar is an incredibly personal film about identity pressure and what happens when the lines between performance and reality completely break down,” Jordan Tortorello said in a statement. “Built completely independently and self-financed from the ground up, this project is a testament to what happens when passionate like-minded people come together to create their own opportunities.”
Yamada Takayuki Stars in Australia–Japan Supernatural Romance Tanabata: The Evening of the Seventh. The film is currently mid-shoot in Japan with a third block of filming planned for October in Australia. The film is fully funded by Australian production company Titantale Film with several production service partners in Japan. “The film spans three historical periods – Edo-period Japan, 1865 New South Wales and 2027 Australia – following three incarnations of the same souls across a karmic cycle of love and possession.” Writer-director Gillian Roberts serves as executive producer alongside producer Sabin Gnawali. “Tanabata: The Evening of the Seventh comes from a belief that our inner world also exists in an outer world that moves across time, space and dimension,” Roberts said.
Industry: Lionsgate has taken an equity stake in the generative AI video company Runway and plans to pull from its existing catalogue of intellectual property for an AI short-form series, expanding a partnership the two companies struck in 2024. Lionsgate and Runway also plan to start a new development program to create content using generative AI. The companies will also launch a series of “filmmaker-focused” events.
Neither company has released any financial details regarding their deal, though Lionsgate’s equity in the AI firm is not a cash investment. “Runway is a great creative partner, an exciting part of our AI strategy and a valuable driver in expanding our storytelling capabilities,” Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns said in a statement. “This is an iterative process. As we continue to expand the use cases of Runway technology across our production operations and introduce its tools to more of our filmmakers, we believe it will help our talent redefine and reshape the art of the possible in their creative endeavors.”
Lionsgate started working with Runway in September of 2024. The initial deal was for Runway to help with “the pre-visualization, storyboarding, parts of the post-production process and a potential repurposing of content across rating scales and genres.”
However, Thursday’s equity stake announcement marks an expansion of the deal, “potentially allowing characters from some of Lionsgate’s properties — the studio declined to indicate what those might be — to emerge in an AI project” Runway co-founder and co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela says in a statement. “We consistently see that the studios most serious about AI are thinking about it as a creative resource, not a cost-cutting tool…Lionsgate gets that. This expanded partnership will help more stories be told, faster. That’s core to our mission at Runway, and we’re excited to help create the next generation of iconic content.”
The new DGA deal secures a provision in its new contract that limits actors and others who work on TV series from directing episodes, as it seeks to preserve jobs for career TV directors. The new provision addresses the 40% downturn in production jobs over the last four years, which has left many of the 19,500 members of the Directors Guild of America out of work. The DGA has made a pact with AMPTP (the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) in order to “protect members’ jobs, as well as increases in contributions to the health fund and in residuals, and new provisions on artificial intelligence.”
Per the summary released by the union on Friday June 12, 2026 the contract “seeks to preserve valuable episodic directing slots for career directors by limiting the number of episodes that can be directed by those who have no track record in directing and are already employed in other capacities on a scripted series.”
The provision is intended to support career directors, while still allowing room for those who are serious about building directing careers to continue to work. A key example is Noah Wylie who stars in The Pitt, who directed an episode of the second season of the show. Wylie has done previous directorial work on other series and has serious aspirations to continue directing. Though the DGA declined to release further details on how the provision would work.
The DGA has also been focused on making sure that its members are allowed to work on U.S. productions that go overseas. Per the tentative new deal, “the studios and the union will task a committee with studying the application of the DGA contract outside North America.”Additionally, the union has also been lobbying for a federal tax incentive to help bring productions back from overseas. “Under the terms, the studios have agreed to have their top executives — and not just the Motion Picture Association — participate in that lobbying.”
Much like the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, the deal also includes new provisions on AI, including a stipulation that “all footage generated by AI will remain under a director’s control.” As well as provisions mandating “notice of any AI training and transparency about the use of AI, which closely resemble terms won by the WGA. “The contract also includes a new employer-funded program to help directors build their AI skills.” Production studios also agreed to pay higher contributions to the health plan, “in keeping with the pace of health inflation, and to raise the cap on wages subject to contributions. The deal also includes a new credit for pilot directors.”
Although, the deal does require the DGA to scale back benefits in certain respects, such as imposing monthly premiums. The full changes to the health plan will be finalized later on by the trustees of the plan. Earlier this year, the WGA similarly agreed to significant increases in costs to members as the price of a substantial increase in employer contributions.The agreement remains subject to ratification by the membership.
