A magnetic Matthew McConaughey fiddles, sings and tends bees until things take a dark turn in The Rivals Of Amziah King from Black Bear opening at 500+ theaters. Nimrods, a Green Day-inspired, R-rated road trip comedy starring Mason Thames and Mckenna Grace debuts on 1,000+ screens. Neon’s The Wrong Girls with Kristin Stewart and Alia Shawcat; Angel Studios’ latest The Brink Of War; Will Poulter-starring Union County and nonfiction American Doctor and The Bend In the River are setting up another solid indie weekend.

The Rivals Of Amziah King, the second feature from Andrew Patterson (The Vast of Night), is a crime thriller with a phenomenal soundtrack set in the backwoods of rural Oklahoma. Angelina LookingGlass, Kurt Russell, Cole Sprouse, Jake Horowitz, Scott Shepherd, Rob Morgan and Tony Revolori also star in this dive into the unexpectedly cutthroat world of honey that world premiered to a rare standing ovation at SXSW. The film was written by James Montague, produced by Black Bear, Heyday Films, G.E.D Media.

Critics are calling it McConaughey’s career best (see Deadline review) as the head of a small-town honey-producing operation, and leader of a band that frequently erupts into T Bone Burnett-produced bluegrass musical numbers. Quill, a song from the film performed by McConaughey, Ben Hardesty, Miranda Zickler, LookingGlass and Andrea Pister, was officially released as part of the soundtrack on August 7.

Synopsis: Deep within the backwoods of rural Oklahoma, charismatic and musically gifted Amziah King herds a bluegrass-playing band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When Amziah’s estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, he leaps at the possibility to renew connection and create a family business. But the honey game is ruthless and Amziah’s rivals threaten to destroy everything he has built.

Inaugural Entertainment and Live Nation Studios are launching Green Day-inspired comedy film Nimrods by Lee Kirk starring starring Mason Thames, Mckenna Grace, Kylr Coffman, Ryan Foust, Ignacio Diaz- Silverio, Keen Ruffalo, Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey, Fred Armisen, Bobby Lee and Sean Gunn.

When Tommy (Thames) receives a phone call inviting his band to open for Green Day on New Years Eve, he doesn’t realize it’s an elaborate prank by his older brother, Wayne. Desperate to believe his life is about to change, Tommy steals Wayne’s car and begins driving his band from Kansas City to Los Angeles, hell bent on getting there in three days. What follows is a rowdy and uproarious road trip across America, inspired by Green Day’s early days of touring in a van, years before the release of their breakout record, Dookie.

Green Day Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong teamed with Kirk on the movie and appears with bandmates Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool. His son Jakob wrote songs for the film’s fictional band, Analog Dogs. Premiered at TIFF. See Deadline’s Q&A with Billie Joe Armstrong.

The distributor is eyeing a built-in cross-generational pop-punk fanbase leveraging the global IP and music catalog of Green Day to bridge Gen X/Millennial nostalgia with Gen Z moviegoers through young leads Thames and Grace.

The Nimrods campaign was launched by surprising hardcore Green Day fans, cast, and select press with a branded mailer that included limited edition VHS tapes loaded with the trailer days before it went live online. The Nimrods made a stop at San Diego Comic-Con with an activation at Petco Park where Green Day performed on top of an ice cream truck to a crowd of thousands and threw out merch (including branded ice cream), with Kirk and his wife Jenna Fischer (The Office) and star Mason Thames standing by. The Nimrods original soundtrack was released on July 31, 2026, featuring 22 Green Day songs, four unreleased live tracks, a new studio song (I’m Never Gonna R.I.P”), and contributions from Analog Dogs, Mckenna Grace, The Paradox, and Ultra.

Neon stoner comedy The Wrong Girls, Dylan Meyer’s directorial debut, opens on 510 screens. Stars Kristen Stewart, Alia Shawkat, LaKeith Stanfield, Tony Hale and Zack Fox, with Seth Rogen, Kumail Nanjiani, Kate McKinnon and Geena Davis.

Two codependent best friends (Stewart and Shawkat) living paycheck to paycheck, and bong rip to bong rip, get caught in a case of mistaken identity that throws their lives into chaos. 

Neon and American Cinematheque partnered on the official premiere August 5 with a full takeover of all three screens at the Los Feliz 3 theater. See Deadline review. It’s offering merch including t-shirts, caps and limited edition posters.

Neon produced and financed the film as well as handling U.S. distribution and international sales. It noted the project was shot in Los Angeles after the devastating wildfires, the production employed about 100 people a day across its 29-day production, 90% locals.

This is the company’s second collaboration with Stewart after Pablo Larraín’s Spencer, which nabbed her a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

GKids is rereleasing Your Name on about 650 screens in the U.S. and Canada on its 10^th anniversary. It’s seeing strong presales for the anime landmark by Makoto Shinkai that was the highest grossing film of all time in Japan (since surpassed) and earned over $358 million worldwide. 

Funimation originally released the title in the U.S. in 2017.  GKids acquired it earlier this year. The distributor reps most of the director’s past catalog including Your Name, 5 Centimeters per Second and Weathering With You. Crunchyroll handled his last film, Suzume, in 2023 and was just confirmed as global distributor for his next.

In Your Name, rural schoolgirl Mitsuha and city kid Taki awaken one morning to discover that they’ve switched bodies. The total strangers struggle to navigate each other’s lives, walking tightropes of intimacy and distance. But when they finally resolve to meet, the true nature of their connection threatens to seal their fate.

The last installment of Robb Moss’ generational portrait, The Bend In The River, opens at the Film Forum in NYC. Executive produced by Frances McDormand and Joel Coen, it world premiered at Telluride.

The director filmed five of his close friends — Barry, Danny, Cathy, Jeff and Jim — for nearly 50 years starting with a 1978 clothing-optional rafting trip through the Grand Canyon that resulted in his short documentary, Riverdogs (1982). He resumed shooting as they came to terms with middle age for his 2003 follow-up, The Same River Twice. The Bend In The River, the final leg of the trilogy, finds the group in their seventies and grappling with the choices they’ve made as individuals and as a generation. See Deadline’s interview with Moss.

Watermelon Pictures deubts American Doctor the Angelika in New York. Directed by Poh Si Teng, this is a vérité non-fiction film following three prominent American physicians from different backgrounds –Palestinian, Jewish and Zoroastrian — bound by their shared oath to save lives.

Dr. Thaer Ahmad is measured and strategic, Dr. Mark Perlmutter is blunt and wears his heart on his sleeve, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is media-savvy and prolific. Filmed in unfolding, on-the-ground scenes, the story follows them from a Gazan hospital under siege to the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C. where they fight to keep a promise to their Palestinian colleagues and patients to continue the struggle.

Adds the Laemmle Royal in LA next week followed by San Francisco, Chicago and Toronto. The distributor has set aside one free screening in each market for healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, physician assistants, EMTs and medical students.

The Brink Of War from Angel Studios opens wide on 2,073 screens. By Michael Russell Gunn, starring Jeff Daniels, Jared Harris, Guy Burnet and Aya Cash. The politically charged drama is set at the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, where Ronald Reagan (Daniels) and Mikhail Gorbachev (Harris) met to discuss the future of the nuclear arms race. The U.S. president races against time to salvage a deal with Soviet leader that could dismantle nuclear arsenals or risk disaster.

Oscilloscope Laboratories debuts Union County, written and directed by Adam Meeks in his feature debut, on ten screens. Will Poulter and  Noah Centineo star as brothers Cody and Jack Parsons, each navigating a court-mandated drug rehabilitation program in a pocket of rural Ohio hit hard by the opioid epidemic. Provided with hope for the first time since their struggles began and with the support of a tireless counselor (Annette Deao), the brothers work toward a brighter, sober future. Premiered at Sundance, see Deadline’s Q&A with Meeks and Poulter.

Event: Dark Sky Films and Fathom Entertainment are celebrating another Texas Chain Saw Day next Tuesday (Aug 18) for one night only. Over 1,000 theaters in the U.S. and 50 in Canada are on board to screen the Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Dread Central, Be Afraid Media and the Creepy podcast produced a four-minute audio experience that will play before the film. Cinematographer Daniel Pearl will participate in a live Q&A at Regal LA Live in LA after the screening. In Austin. Cast members Teri McMinn and Allen Danziger will chat after a show at AMC Barton Creek.

Theaters are welcome to add additional screenings.

Dark Sky and Exurbia Films have also released the first official still from the hand-animated rotoscoped version of the film, currently in production for a planned 2027 debut. It’s Leatherface, below.

In case you didn’t already know, Paramount CEO David Ellison really wants to make sure this afternoon that everybody is clear those pesky state Attorney Generals and their antitrust lawsuit are ruining a really good $111 billion thing — and now even Mexico agrees with him.

“Paramount and WBD could and would close today and begin delivering the benefits recognized by regulators around the world, theater owners and others across the industry but for the actions of just 12 state attorneys general,” declares a Friday news dump by any other name from Paramount as America’s immediate south neighbor joins “68 countries worldwide, including the European Union, UK, Australia, Canada, Brazil, China, COMESA, the U.S. Department of Justice” in approving the increasingly bitter merger

“While we remain confident that the law and the facts are on our side, we have offered commitments and concessions and remain open to working constructively with the State AGs to find a path forward in the interest of our employees and the creative community in California and across the world – just as we have with the regulators in 68 countries worldwide,” Ellison is quoted as saying.

Read today’s full “news announcement” from Paramount Skydance here

The long anticipated action from California’s Rob Bonta, New York’s Letitia James and other Blue State AGs against the MAGA inclined Ellison, Para and WBD was filed on July 13. The WGA leapt on the bandwagon with a suit of their own. With a truncated TRO in place, Oakland-based U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín set a two-week trial to start on March 2 2027.

Both sides have consequently dug legal and PR trenches to snipe at the other and rally endorsements. To that Team Ellison has dribble out a series of executive elite themed leaks in recent weeks, including leaving the home of Hollywood for the likes of Texas, Tennessee or Georgia.

There are no settlement talks, though Paramount’s legal boss Makan Delrahim has said “everything is on the table” to make a deal with Sacramento and Albany.

To that Paramount claims they have submitted a number of concessions to the AGs, but they need some response by October 1 — which is when a $7 million a day ticking fee to WBD shareholders kicks in. That ticking fee, potential further payouts and the declining net worth of Papa Ellison and Oracle founder Larry, adds a multi-billion dollar bill for Paramount to the $80 billion debt the combo company will have on Day 1.

To that in perspective, the penalties bill that could exceed $10 billion, and see no ParaBros in the end.

So, reiterating a lot of the same talking points and math the company has been making for months, and offering none of the specifics the likes of the Teamsters and others have demanded, we now have today’s self-styled “news announcement” from the Melrose lot.

An announcement that is taking the blame game to great heights or lows, depending on your POV and who is blackmailing who — to paraphrase Bonta banger of earlier this week.

“Rather than support a stronger Hollywood and deliver tangible commitments to invest in for the benefit of labor, talent and other industry participants, the current path the 12 State AGs are on additional delay for a trial beyond the engagement of the last 9 months will impose needless costs from penalty fees, litigation expenses and business disruption,” Paramount asserts today.

Instead of proclaiming investment in L.A. production (which the company received nearly $38 million in Golden State tax credits for earlier this week), Paramount pours gasoline on the fear fire.

“As a business with many stakeholders, including pension and state retirement funds, Paramount is required to consider how it can absorb the unnecessary additional financial costs while preserving the longer-term strength of the combined company,” the over 110-year old studio states. “The better path would be to resolve this through a settlement that would serve the interests of workers, consumers and the consumers in each of the 12 states.”

Let’s just say, with a bit less ominous implications, the top law enforcement officials of some of the biggest and richest states in the union aren’t buying into Paramount’s premise.

“We’ve made our legal position clear: As it stands today, the proposed Warner Bros./Paramount merger will mean higher costs, less competition, lower wages, job cuts, and fewer movies and TV shows,” a spokesperson from the California AGs’ office told Deadline in reaction to Paramount’s Friday release

“This merger violates long-standing federal antitrust law,” Bonta’s team added in language we’ve all heard dozens of times before the last month or so. “Further, as the court indicated when it ruled in its July temporary restraining order our case is likely to succeed on its merits. The California Department of Justice remains committed to enforcing the law.”

Looks like, as Hollywood packs up for one of the last weekends of the summer, we have a very sticky stalemate.

This story first ran in the animation newsletter “Sketch to Screen.” Subscribe here to receive a new entry in your inbox.

“Supergirl,” the second film in James Gunn’s developing DCU and one of the biggest box office bombs of an otherwise strong year for movie theaters, isn’t the worse movie I watched in 2026. But it’s probably the most disappointing. An adaptation of an acclaimed standalone series called “Woman of Tomorrow,” “Supergirl” has a great lead in Milly Alcock and nothing else worth remembering. Whereas the comic it is based on is stunningly bright and beautiful to look at, “Supergirl” is a murky, brown-tinted eyesore. Its generic plot strands the character in a sci-fi universe that feels microscopically small, populated by third-rate archetypes the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies would barely have time for. There are interesting threads to unravel regarding Kara’s grief and anger, but the story she’s stranded in doesn’t have time to do that in any meaningful way.   

Even more galling: as “Supergirl” was tarnishing the character’s reputation in movie theaters, a great adaptation of the character was airing on Adult Swim. “My Adventures With Superman,” an animated series reimagining the early career of the most famous superhero on the planet. Ostensibly, Clark Kent is the main character, but Season 2 introduced Kara (voiced in the show by Kiana Madeira), and the currently airing Season 3 — which airs its season finale this Sunday — sees her take center stage. And she rules: reimagined as a former brainwashed intergalactic conquerer attempting to atone for her misdeeds, the show’s Kara is charming, funny, badass, with a meaty arc about atoning for her misdeeds and a super cute romance with Jimmy Olsen (Ishmel Sahid) that slots right in with the show’s bright, optimistic tone and focus on these character’s day-to-day struggles contrasted with the sci-fi operatics. If “Supergirl” the movie only scratched the surface of the character’s potential, “My Adventures With Superman” takes the time to really examine what makes her tick. 

“My Adventures With Superman” is one of three animated shows adapting popular comic book superheroes that ran over the course of this summer, along with “X-Men ’97” on Disney+, which concluded its second season earlier this week, and “Batman: Caped Crusader” on Amazon Prime, which premiered its second season in late July. Pitched to a slightly older audience than usual for an animated comic book series, teenage up as opposed to for children, these shows aren’t flawless. But as comic book film studios continues to struggle to adjust to a world where they are no longer the center of the entertainment landscape (give or take “Spider-Man”), these shows demonstrate that these characters are better suited for serialized storytelling in the first place. 

One of the major criticisms of superhero cinema for the past decade has been its resolute sameness: while certain MCU movies may have loose genre window-dressing, they’re fundamentally tonally similar in their quippy characters and excess spectacle. But all three of these series have strong art direction and visions for these characters that feels spiritually true to the source material but also provides something fresh and new that fans haven’t seen before, and are all radically different from one another. 

Heavily inspired by early 2000s anime, “My Adventures With Superman” is the bright, zippy, lighthearted offering. The show takes the characters and their battles seriously, but it provides a wonderfully comforting take on Superman that also heavily foregrounds the love story between Clark and Lois; it’s a rom-com as much as it is a series about fighting invading aliens. It works because of how well-drawn these versions of the characters are, and because his relationship with Lois was always what made the seemingly invulnerable Clark feel most human. If the 2025 James Gunn “Superman” film sometimes strained to reinvent the character’s optimism for modern audiences, “My Adventures With Superman” makes that challenge look effortless.

“Batman: Caped Crusader” is also about its lead character’s early years, but otherwise takes a radically different approach inspired by the earliest Batman stories of the 1940s. The series was developed by Bruce Timm, the man behind the celebrated and definitive “Batman: the Animated Series” from the ’90s, and plays like a spiritual successor of that classic pitched to older audiences, setting Bruce Wayne’s adventures as Batman in a period version of Gotham. Whereas other superhero shows go for a bright palette, “Caped Crusader” evokes classic film noir with its dark-hued animation and 1940s fashion, as well as its focus on the character unraveling mysteries with detective stories that proves considerably more fruitful than the recent “The Batman” and its attempt to do the same.

“X-Men ’97” is another successor of a ’90s kids’ cartoon, albeit a direct sequel. The 1992 “X-Men” animated series that aired on Fox during the decade was a foundational series for fans of the Marvel superhero team, providing definitive versions of the mutant protectors in all their messy, soapy excess. “’97” picks up where the series left off, but again ages up the content for adults who grew up with the series for a much darker tone. The animation emphasizes fidelity to the original show and the time period’s garish aesthetic in general, for a show that, more than almost any film, truly feels like picking up and reading five random issues of a comic run from 30 years ago. 

Not all of these series are of equal quality. “My Adventures with Superman” has been the most consistent of the three, a nice good time throughout all three seasons without ever being exceptional. “Caped Crusader” Season 1 was a promising start, but Season 2 ramped up the stakes and serialized storytelling for a much improved follow-up. “X-Men ’97,” meanwhile, had a near flawless debut season, but a divisive Season 2 that struggled with unfocused storytelling and weaker stakes, albeit with a standout fourth episode that ranks among the best of the series (the show’s production was likely marred by the firing of head writer Beau DeMayo during work on Season 2 for allegations of sexual harrasment).

Still, all the shows highlight how much better suited these characters, and the episodic comic storytelling that made them famous, are to animation and TV than films, with time to flesh out supporting cast members who are mostly bit parts in big screen adaptations. For all of the faults of “X-Men ’97” Season 2, it still has space to highlight a giant ensemble, whereas the movies mostly focused purely on Wolverine and left the rest of the team to the wayside; in particular, it can’t be underestimated how much PR the show has done for Cyclops’ reputation after the movies relegated him to a boring stick-in-the-mud.

As I’m writing this, Marvel is (allegedly) prepping to debut its new team of MCU X-Men at the D23 convention. I’m interested to see where the adaptation is headed. But I also know that, if it’s bad, I can just stick with the cartoons. 

“My Adventures With Superman” is currently streaming on HBO Max. “Batman: Caped Crusader” is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. “X-Men ’97” is currently streaming on Disney+.