Festival favorites Musk, Misty Green and Fjord debut in limited release in a crowded indie market with awards season rolling along.

Bleecker Street’s documentary by Oscar-winner Alex Gibney opens in four theaters in New York (Angelika and Lincoln Square, and LA (AMC Century City and Burbank). The buzzy portrait of Tesla, X and SpaceX chief Elon Musk premiered at Venice to critical acclaim, currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (off 28 reviews, see Deadline’s here). The world’s richest person, MAGA donor, chainsaw waver, baby daddy and would-be Mars colonizer takes a thrashing. He didn’t participate in the doc and has trashed it on X but wanders across the frames as CGI avatar speaking words that Musk has spoken.

Weekend Q&A screenings with Gibney were sold out in NYC and selling fast in Los Angeles, featuring producer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Ronan Farrow, journalist Zoe Schiffer, and former conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, who shares a child with Musk and appears in the film. She refused to accept a financial settlement after her split with the multi-billionaire that would have required her to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

The doc, which also screened at fests from TIFF to Zurich, Hamptons, Mill Valley Film Festival, Beyondfest and more, is a hefty 225 minutes long – plus a ten-minute intermission – which limits showtimes. Expands to about 300 screens next week.

Musk has converged with Sony’s wide release this weekend of Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, a sequel to The Social Network focused on the dangerous, sordid side of Facebook under founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a damning look at OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman isn’t coming out until December but has been making headlines since its world premiere at the New York Film Festival this week.

Filmmakers clearly have big tech on their minds, especially AI, which is everywhere in the national conversation heading into the mid-term elections.

Neon launches Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes Palme d’Or-winning drama Fjord starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve at four theaters in NY and LA. A devout Romanian Norwegian couple named Gheorghius resettle in a village in a distant fjord where they become close to their neighbors, the Halbergs. Their children bond. When adolescent Elia Gheorghiu shows up at school with bruises, the community questions the traditional education the Gheorghiu children are getting from their parents. Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh at 91%. Deadline’s review here.

The film reps the second Palme d’Or for Mungiu and the seventh consecutive win for Neon. The film also took the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes and is Romania’s Oscar entry for Best International Feature.

A24 debuts Chris Rock’s Misty Green at six theaters across New York (Lincoln Square, Alamo, Union Square) and LA (Grove, Burbank, Century City). The TIFF-premiering original indie drama has a first-time lead in Rosalind Eleazar and sees Rock as a filmmaker returning to the director’s chair after more than a decade. Eleazar stars as a talented actress whose career has stalled fighting for a second act years after her Hollywood breakthrough. See Deadline review.

Cohen Media Group is out with Winter Of The Crow starring Lesley Manville in 30+ markets and 63 screens, a mix of AMCs, Landmarks and arthouses. Manville’s U.K. professor Dr. Joan Andrews is invited to Warsaw to give a lecture in 1981 just as martial law is being imposed. As chaos engulfs the city, she witnesses a murder by the secret police and becomes a fugitive on the run fighting for her life and those of the students with whom she has allied. Directed and co-written by Kasia Adamik from a short story by Nobel and Booker Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk. Premiered at TIFF 2025. Agnieszka Holland (Adamik’s mother) is an executive producer. At RT 94% off 16 reviews.

More to come

John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell were a perfect double act at the BFI London Film Festival premiere of Wild Horse Nine Friday night.

The pair livened up a British audience with a well-received screening of the film at the city’s Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, though both actors declined to talk to too many reporters on the carpet.

Rockwell said on stage about what drew him to the film: “Martin’s annoyingly handsome but very talented,” as laughter erupted across the room. “What drew me to the film is reading the script,” added a polite but enigmatic Malkovich — sporting a beanie, no less.

Malkovich, riding the wave of immense Oscar buzz, has already claimed Venice’s prestigious Volpi Cup for best actor for his performance. British-born Irish filmmaker McDonagh, who has taken Wild Horse Nine on the festival circuit but is finally on home turf at the London Film Festival, told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet that he thinks Brits will enjoy the movie’s dark humor. He was spotted sharing a kiss with long-time partner Phoebe Waller-Bridge shortly before the lights went down.

Wild Horse Nine stars Malkovich and Rockwell as Chris and Lee, longtime CIA partners stationed in Santiago, Chile who are dispatched to Easter Island by their bureau chief (Steve Buscemi). Against the surreal backdrop of the island’s monumental Moai statues, the pair begin reckoning with their murky shared past. At the same time, Chris forms an unexpected bond with two rebellious Chilean students, played by Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas — an encounter that threatens to unravel the agents’ friendship and the conspiracy in which they have become entangled.

Buscemi said to THR about preparing for the role of his CIA boss MJ: “I don’t know any CIA agents, but Martin recommended a book, which was helpful to a certain extent. But really, I get everything I need from the script. It’s so well-written from Martin and working off the other actors [helps], because when it comes right down to it, [MJ] is a boss and he has bosses and he’s under a lot of pressure.”

He added about the London crowd: “I think they’ll get a kick out of it. I think they’ll enjoy it. I think audiences all over will get a lot out of it because it’s so well-made. It’s Martin McDonagh, and it’s got a great cast, and it’s a great story.”

When asked about which movie he’d like to have starred in this year, Buscemi threw us a curveball. “I haven’t seen Wicker, but that’s something that looks like it’s a lot of fun to be in. So I’m looking forward to seeing that one.” (Wicker, also screening at LFF, stars Olivia Colman as an ostracized, single fisherwoman in a conservative medieval seaside town who commissions the local basket-maker to weave her a husband, played by Alexander Skarsgard.)

The BFI London Film Festival kicked off with an emotional and fervent screening of Andrew Scott and Olivia Colman’s Elsinore on Wednesday night. The Irishman — looking like Malkovich’s main rival in the Oscar race so far — had attendees on their feet as he welcomed the real-life people who inspired particular Elsinore characters, including Colman’s Professor Margaret Johnson, a pioneer of HIV/AIDS treatment in the late ’80s.

The 70th edition of the BFI London Film Fest runs Oct. 7-18 and is set to continue with a run of star-spangled galas including screenings of Artificial, Bunker, Behemoth!, Ink, Club Kid, A Long Winter, Ray Gunn and Paper Tiger.

Skydance‘s CEO Business Leadership Team unveiled on Monday features only Co-Chairs, with everyone in the group sharing oversight of a division alongside someone else. All pairs come from the same side of the merged Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery company (WBD’s Casey Bloys & JB Perrette for DTC and James Gunn & Peter Safran for DC; Paramount’s Dana Goldberg & Josh Greenstein for film) except for one crossover duo: Paramount’s George Cheeks and WBD’s Perrette, who will serve as co-Chairs of Skydance TV.

The move marks the latest shared leadership position for Cheeks and also a new role he has not been in yet — at least by title — as Chief Content Officer of Skydance TV, a unit spanning Skydance’s three TV studios, Warner Bros. TV, CBS Studios and Paramount TV Studios, CBS and about 30 basic cable networks. As Skydance TV Chief Business officer, Perrette will oversee the division’s ad sales, distribution, content sales and international operations.

For a decade now, Harvard Law graduate Cheeks has been the business partner to a creative executive, whether it was as Co-President of Universal Cable Prods. and Wilshire Studios alongside Dawn Olmstead or as NBC Entertainment Co-Chairman alongside Paul Telegdy. Now he is the creative executive alongside Perrette with a title matching that of Skydance DTC Chief Content Officer Bloys, one of TV industry’s most accomplished development executives.

That caps a long evolution for Cheeks that can be traced back to one of his first Hollywood jobs, while having Perrette as Chief Business Officer across DTC as well as TV Studios and linear networks corrects a structural flow that existed at both Paramount and WBD.

The Business Guy

After stints at entertainment law firms Loeb & Loeb and Hansen Jacobson Teller and the BA & legal department of Castle Rock Entertainment early on, Cheeks landed a business and legal affairs job at MTV Networks. There, along with drafting deal memos, he also started doing script coverage for then-top programming executives Tony DiSanto and Liz Gateley.

Cheeks got his first formal assignment on the creative side — and showed his talent relations skills — when, as EVP Business Operations for NBC and Universal TV, he was put in charge of NBC Late Night in 2014. Lorne Michaels took a liking to him (while disliking his predecessor) and took him under his wing, valuing his creative sense by asking for his feedback on writer packages and taking him to auditions.

Cheeks has acknowledged that getting the NBC Late Night gig changed his career, fueling his aspirations to straddle business and creative. He would later be handpicked as the main liaison to NBCUniversal’s other uber TV producer, Dick Wolf, for similar reasons (the procedural king wanted to switch executives), proving that he can work well with top-level talent.

Still, when Bonnie Hammer announced Cheeks and Olmstead’s appointment as UCP co-Presidents in early 2018, she called Olmstead a “talented creative executive” while praising Cheeks’ “business savvy” as “second to none.” Similarly, Steve Burke’s statement about Cheeks’ promotion as NBC Entertainment co-Chairman alongside Telegdy later that year called him “a strategist and masterful dealmaker.”

That is a perception Cheeks carried over in his 2020 move to then-ViacomCBS as President and CEO of CBS Entertainment, with David Nevins initially serving as the division’s Chief Content Officer. That changed in 2021. Overseeing CBS-branded operations in various roles over the past five years — including another shared one as co-CEO of Paramount Global — varnished Cheeks’ creative credentials as he worked closely with such executives as CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach and CBS Studios President David Stapf.

Now Cheeks, who also has been overseeing Paramount’s basic cable networks, will be focusing on programming and marketing content while expanding his portfolio to include Warner Bros. TV, Paramount TV Studios as WBD’s cable brands, leaving most of the business areas to Perrette. (Given his business background, Cheeks is still expected to get involved in some decisions.)

Bundling Linear & Streaming Business Ops

Legacy media companies such as Skydance are faced with managing the transition from linear TV to streaming, and Perrette serving as Chief Business Officer across both direct-to-consumer and linear networks/TV studios will help facilitate that as the two areas have become intertwined in many key areas such as carriage agreements, ad and content sales.

For instance, in affiliate distribution deals for linear networks, carriers increasingly insist on bundling the streaming service. The same goes for ad buyers who package ad time across linear and digital.

And then there is content licensing, which could be a lot more efficient if the studios’ distribution divisions and their sibling streamers are overseen by the same business op executive. For instance, CBS and Paramount+ had been siloed, with Paramount+ automatically asking for exclusivity on virtually all CBS series. A holistic approach would help determine whether certain shows need to stream exclusively on Paramount+ or, based on their engagement and other metrics, they could be licensed to other platforms too, bringing in revenue that can be used to produce more shows.

Straddling both areas will also give the business executive in charge more ownership over next-day CBS series to better integrate them into the platform alongside the Paramount+ originals. (CBS fare, a big viewership driver in-season, is expected to stay largely on Paramount+ until the streamer’s merger with HBO Max is completed within the next couple of years.)

Additionally, the new streamlined structure with Perrette across both linear and streaming business ops makes for simplified and expedited decision-making. At WBD, where he was CEO of global streaming, it was a quartet of executives collaborating on these decisions: Perrette, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell and President of International Gerhard Zeiler.

‘The Odd Couple’ 2.0?

In addition to being the only cross-company pair in the top Skydance executive echelon, Cheeks and Perrette share another distinction — Cheeks is the only former Paramount Global and Perrette the only former Discovery executive in the group.

As for compatibility, both are bringing in good track record. Perrette already has his successful partnership with Bloys, and Cheeks has showed that he could work with anyone.

Cheeks joked about it when asked in 2019 how he gets along with Telegdy, a flamboyant, larger-than-life personality.

“We literally could not be more different. It’s like Casting 101: ‘Let’s cast this dude and that dude and they’re so different, they’re an odd couple,’” he said at NATPE.

Cheeks clearly impressed Hollywood moguls with his performance as he keeps getting cast as half of executive couples.