Erik Feig: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: When Calls the Heart‘s Chris McNally has landed heavily recurring roles on two series — Paramount+’s upcoming Grease prequel Rise of the Pink Ladies, and season 2 of Netflix’s Firefly Lane, opposite Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke.

EXCLUSIVE: Erik Feig’s Picturestart and Patrick Wachsberger’s Picture Perfect Federation have set Luce and Cloverfield Paradox filmmaker Julius Onah to direct their college admissions thriller Bad Genius, which is gearing up for a summer shoot.

Jackie Hoffman as Asst. Principal McGee. “We are thrilled to unveil our new original series that will introduce an incredible cast of young stars in the making and electrifying musical numbers you will fall in love with,” said Nicole Clemens, President, Paramount Television Studios & Paramount+ Original Scripted Series.

Joe Otterson TV ReporterParamount Plus has announced the cast for the upcoming series “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies.”The musical series takes place four years before the original “Grease” in 1954. Before rock ‘n’ roll ruled, before the T-Birds were the coolest in the school, four fed-up outcasts dare to have fun on their own terms, sparking a moral panic that will change Rydell High forever.The cast includes: Marisa Davila as Jane, Cheyenne Isabel Wells as Olivia, Ari Notartomaso as Cynthia, Tricia Fukuhara as Nancy, Shanel Bailey as Hazel, Madison Thompson as Susan, Johnathan Nieves as Richie, Jason Schmidt as Buddy, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper as Wally and Jackie Hoffman as Asst. Principal McGee.

Paramount+ has announced its cast for Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, as principal photography gets underway in Vancouver.

The deals keep coming at the 2022 Virtual Sundance Film Festival. MUBI closed the docu Free Chol Soo Lee, including North America, and Warner Bros is negotiating a near $7 million WW rights deal for the Tig Notaro/Stephanie Allynne film Am I Ok? to place the film on HBO Max. The Lauren Pomerantz-scripted film stars Dakota Johnson, Sonoya Mizuno, Jermaine Fowler, Molly Gordon, June Diane Raphael, and Sean Hayes.

Apple has closed the biggest deal of the 2022 Virtual Sundance Film Festival, securing worldwide rights to the Cooper Raiff-directed Cha Cha Real Smooth for around $15 million. The streamer has been the front runner for the picture since it premiered January 23 in the US Dramatic Competition category.

EXCLUSIVE: Cooper Raiff can’t seem to catch a break from Covid. A hyphenate who comes into Sundance with one of the buzziest acquisitions titles in Cha Cha Real Smooth, Raiff is coming off the debut Shithouse — it’s more thoughtful than it sounds — that won the Grand Jury Prize at 2020 SXSW. Unfortunately, it was also the first major festival forced to cancel in-person events by Austin when Covid exploded. Raiff has made another charming confused young man comes of age film that he wrote, directed, produced and starred in. And now has run smack into Covid Delta’s sequel, Omicron. Which means he’ll keep intact his festival streak of being unable to experience his film playing in a crowded theater, a disadvantage since he makes crowd-pleasing films. The film, which stars Raiff, Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann, Brad Garrett, Vanessa Burghardt and Evan Assante, makes its virtual Sundance debut tomorrow. The hope is that by the time the film gets released, Raiff’s work can be discovered in a theater. “Cooper’s magic is that his vision remained consistent, only deeper because of his interactions with the actors,” said producer Erik Feig, whose Picturehouse co-financed the film with Endeavor Content. “Cooper is a true humanist fully of empathy that is infused in every frame of this film.”

Todd Gilchrist After almost two years of movie theaters being partially or completely closed, streaming services are poised to have their biggest moment yet. The 2022 Sundance Film Festival is one of the first major festivals where a steadily growing number of services can test their muscle, and their money, not just against traditional distribution methods themselves.“Everyone has gotten incredibly used to the idea of watching movies that are first-run on streaming without any kind of stigma,” Picturestart founder and CEO Erik Feig says.

EXCLUSIVE: CBS is developing Unplanned In Akron, a multi-camera comedy from Picturestart and CBS Studios.

EXCLUSIVE: Prime Video has opted not to order a second season of I Know What You Did Last Summer, a modern take on the 1973 novel by Lois Duncan and the 1997 film adaptation.

As a former Summit Entertainment and Lionsgate exec whose credits include films across the Twilight, Divergent and Hunger Games franchises, Erik Feig can boast some $6 billion in box office receipts from the young adult genre alone. But he pulled off an even more impressive feat — at least to the average Angeleno — when he walked the entirety of Sunset Boulevard on a June day in the early 2000s.

By Justin Kroll