Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain reunite for a Christmas comedy, Millie Bobby Brown portrays Kerri Strug, and David Dastmalchian in a new horror thriller
Deck the Y’alls (Sandbox Studios)
Octavia Spencer (Truth Be Told, Ma) and Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Good Nurse) will reunite for the first time since The Help in 2011 for Deck the Y’alls. The film will follow New York baker Rachel Stein (Jessica Chastain), who falls for Beau, a younger Southern gentleman, and heads to Charleston, South Carolina to spend Christmas with his family. But over-protective matriarch Gladys Gibbes (Octavia Spencer) is a celebrity chef who clashes with Rachel. The film will be written by Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip, The Blackening) and produced by Sony Music Vision alongside Spencer’s ORIT Entertainment and Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films. Filming is scheduled to commence on location in Charleston in early January.
Perfect (Netflix)
Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things, the Enola Holmes series) will play Olympic champion gymnast Kerri Strug in Perfect. Strug famously landed a perfect vault score on a badly injured ankle during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and the film will depict her role in the famous USA women’s gymnastics team nicknamed “The Magnificent Seven.” The project will be directed by Gia Coppola (The Last Showgirl, Palo Alto), with filming scheduled to begin in Riverside, California in April 2026.
The Shepherd (Magnolia Pictures)
Character actor David Dastmalchian (Rosario, Late Night with the Devil, Murderbot) has become a fan-favorite star of small-scale horror films, and his next project will be The Shepherd. Set in the desolate Nevada night, film follows a young woman in labor (Georgina Campbell from Barbarian) fleeing an abusive past who has her escape hijacked by a mysterious stranger hiding an ominous threat in the back of her car. Directed by John Hyams (the Universal Soldier film series), the film will be produced under Dastmalchian’s Good Fiend Films banner. Filming is scheduled to begin in Las Cruces, New Mexico in early November.
