UPDATE: Deadline has confirmed our story. Sandler, Clooney and Baumbach to team up.
EARLIER: Netflix will produce Noah Baumbach’s next feature, which is being described as a “funny and emotional coming-of-age story about adults”. I’ve also heard the title of the project is “Jay Kelly.” George Clooney is set to star in it. Production on the film is supposed to begin in early 2024.
In December 2022, the New York Post had reported that Netflix greenlit Baumbach’s next film, except they had claimed that the leads were Brad Pitt and Adam Sandler. It’s quite possible that one of them, probably Pitt, dropped out and got replaced with Clooney.
None of the trades have reported on Baumbach’s new film, but last month Netflix boss Scott Stuber, speaking with Collider, gave us some details:
Noah Baumbach’s got an excellent kind of Jerry Maguire-esque, for lack of a better analogy, but a really great life-affirming movie with two big movie stars that’s starting to come together, so that'll be exciting
Clooney is definitely a “big movie star” and I’m pretty sure Sandler is still in the film — this would be an eccentric pairing of actors, to say the least. Regardless, Baumbach is coming off the biggest success of his career, having co-written “Barbie” with partner Greta Gerwig.
Baumbach signed an exclusive multi-year deal to make movies for Netflix in January 2021, right after his “Marriage Story” was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture. Netflix produced Baumbach’s last three films; 2017’s “The Meyerowitz Stories,” 2019’s “Marriage Story” and 2022’s absurdist $120 million WTF statement “White Noise”