A ‘high-concept ensemble action comedy’ with Ryan Reynolds attached has reportedly sparked a bidding war among studios.
Ryan Reynolds is reportedly attached to a ‘high-concept’ ensemble action comedy, and the package is so enticing that it’s said to have sparked a bidding war among Hollywood studios and streaming firms.
According to Deadline’s somewhat excitable story, the project is called The Dish, and it has a veritable super group of names involved. As well as Reynolds in the lead (or one of the leads), there’s producer and sometime director Simon Kinberg attached, while the script will be by Dana Fox, who previously wrote Cruella and Sandra Bullock/Channing Tatum comedy vehicle, The Lost City.
It amounts to little more than a pitch at present, but it’s evidently attractive enough that no fewer than seven parties have thrown in bids – and the deal could amount to seven figures. By our calculations, that puts it in the million dollar range.
The noteworthy thing about the pitch is that it doesn’t appear to be a sequel, remake or in some form based on an original property – which makes it quite unusual in today’s IP-driven Hollywood landscape.
In fact, merely seeing the term ‘high-concept’ in a news story immediately takes our minds back to the 1980s and early 90s, when screenwriters like Shane Black and Joe Eszterhas were selling scripts like The Last Boy Scout or Basic Instinct for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
Original, high-concept films still exist in the 21st century, but they tend to be made by established names like Christopher Nolan. It begs the question: is there a genuinely ingenious idea behind The Dish, or is it purely the names attached that have gotten studios and streamers in a cash-spending lather?
We’ll bring you more on this story as we hear more.
