Apple Studios Lands Jon Watts Thriller Starring George Clooney & Brad Pitt

Apple Studios has signed a deal with Spider-Man director Jon Watts to write and direct an untitled film starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

Watts, Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures, and Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment are producing the film.

Watts went from the Sundance indie thriller Cop Car to the Marvel Spider-Man trilogy in a flash. Oscar winners George Clooney and Brad Pitt co-starred in the Ocean’s Eleven film franchise.

The thriller revolves around two lone-wolf fixers who are assigned to the same job. The package was put on the market last week, and seven to ten bidders turned up. Sony, Lionsgate, Annapurna, MGM, Universal, Warner Bros, Apple, Netflix, and Amazon were among the competitors.

This is the latest huge film package to be added to Apple’s schedule by Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht. Others include Emancipation, a new film directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring and produced by Academy Award nominee Will Smith; Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro; Spirited, a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic holiday story starring Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, and Octavia Spencer; and Ray.

The Descendants actor Clooney’s next project for Amazon is The Tender Bar, an adaptation of J.R. Moehringer’s memoir starring Ben Affleck. The film will have its world premiere at the London Film Festival. Pitt just won an Oscar for his performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. After wrapping the David Leitch-directed Bullet Train for Sony Pictures, he is currently filming the Damien Chazelle-directed Babylon as part of that star-studded cast for Paramount.

All of this comes after Ted Lasso, an Apple TV+ series, won seven Emmys, including Best Comedy; the label has won a total of 12 Emmys, which is remarkable for a business that debuted just under two years ago.