Rami Malek-Starring Buster Keaton Limited Series From Matt Reeves In Works At Warner Bros TV - Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline hears that Warner Bros. Television is processing a constricted bid astir Buster Keaton that has Oscar and Emmy victor Rami Malek playing the vaudeville-turned-silent drama movie star.

Matt Reeves’ 6th & Idaho Productions, Malek and David Weddle are producing, and we recognize that The Batman director is acceptable to helm. Three-time Emmy victor Ted Cohen (Friends, Succession, Veep) is successful negotiations to constitute and service arsenic an enforcement shaper connected the project. James Curtis’ Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life is being eyed arsenic the root worldly for the series, with negotiations underway by the workplace to unafraid the book.

Daniel Pipski and Rafi Crohn from 6th & Idaho are besides EPs.

The task is being primed to beryllium shopped to streamers and networks; 6th & Idaho are nether an wide woody astatine Warner Bros, as Deadline archetypal told you. Reeves is besides moving connected his Batman HBO Max spinoff bid astatine Warners, The Penguin, with Colin Farrell reprising his web-handed villain from the movie.

Known for his deadpan expression, actor-director Keaton starred successful specified movies arsenic The Playhouse, Cops, The Electric House, Sherlock Jr and The General among respective others; the second considered to beryllium his masterpiece.

In The General, an engineer, aft being rejected by the Confederate military, not realizing it was owed to his important civilian role, indispensable single-handedly recapture his beloved locomotive aft it is seized by Union spies and instrumentality it done force lines. Steamboat Bill Jr. is known for being a nail-biting enactment thriller with a brutal ending that sees Keaton being pulled done a storm, 1 random catastrophe aft another.

Born into a vaudeville family, Keaton’s vocation waned aft his inked with MGM and mislaid his creator independence. His woman divorced him, and helium became an alcoholic. His vocation rebounded successful the 1940s; helium remarried, and earned an Academy Honorary Award in 1959.

Filmmakers including Mel Brooks, Martin Scorsese and Orson Welles were inspired by Keaton, seeing him arsenic an creator who was up of his time. Curtis is simply a renowned biographer of Preston Sturges and W.C. Fields.

Reeves’ The Batman fired up Warner Bros’ instrumentality to theatrical past year, grossing adjacent to $771 cardinal worldwide. It was besides 1 of the most-watched movies connected HBO Max. Malek won Best Actor astatine the Oscars for his crook arsenic Queen frontman Freddie Mercury successful Bohemian Rhapsody, and Lead Actor successful a Drama Series astatine the Emmys for his crook successful USA’s Mr. Robot. He starred arsenic the main villain successful Daniel Craig’s 007 swan song, No Time to Die, which amassed implicit $774M worldwide

Malek is repped by WME, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Cohen is repped by Literate Management, Rohner Walerstein, and UTA. Reeves is repped by CAA, 3 Arts and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner & Klein.