Netflix, fresh on the heels of grabbing a new project from Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, Ball and Chain last week, have found another new star vehicle, this time for Adam Sandler. Sandler will star in Hustle, directed by We the Animals director, Jeremiah Zagar. The project will be produced by LeBron James via SpringHill Entertainment, with James' producing partner, Maverick Carter.

In a storyline that sounds something like Jerry Maguire, Adam Sandler is a basketball scout who is fired, but goes on to discover a rising star hooper overseas. Sandler's character brings his find back to the U.S. to show that they both should be NBA 'stars'. Legendary originally bought the pitch from Materne, Roth/Kirshenbaum and SpringHill in 2018. Netflix acquired the rights from Legendary and pitched it to Sandler. Taylor Materne and Will Fetters wrote the script, which they had to polish-up after Netflix landed Sandler in the starring role.

Like other Netflix projects, including Ball and Chain, announced by Johnson last week, and projects from nearly ever studio in Hollywood, there is no way to know when production could actually start. There are a number of projects that have been delayed as the pandemic has shut down filming locations, sets and production/post facilities and all the Hollywood support structure for the last 60 days.

With all the postponed projects sitting idle, there will certainly be a rush for production sites and facilities as states begin to re-open and theatres, networks and streamers all clamor for content for their audiences. There is likely to be ongoing delays in the pipeline as the facilities available struggle to meet the demand from all the productions as they restart. Already, both Amazon and Netflix are spinning-up the machinery to restart production on their respective series in France, with various projects by both streamer studios set to resume shooting within the next several months. France has been very progressive in helping productions start to move toward restarting with a temporary indemnity fund to help companies that have been impacted by cancellations or interruptions caused by the pandemic.

In the U.S., Blumhouse is also mapping out a plan to work with Universal to spin-up production on a small budget ($6.5MM) film that would shoot on the Universal studio lot. Cast and crew would be housed in a hotel near the lot and would follow a strict set of guidelines. The big issue is that there would be no indemnity or insurance for this case, should cast or crew come down with anything, since insurers will not offer any related coverage.

It is likely that, while new announcements are made for both movie and TV projects, the actual start of their development will occur in fits and starts as state, local and national governments around the world struggle with policies, procedures and regulations that affect the ability of Hollywood casts and crews to go back to work. Travel, of course, is an entirely different issue altogether. While many of the A-listers can travel private to their filming destinations, most of the remaining cast and other crew must fly commercial and airlines remain largely hamstrung, operating far fewer flights to only a fraction of the destinations they normally serve. So unless movie and TV projects that want to film can easily be handled where the majority of their cast and crew reside and can film largely outdoors and in small groups, it may yet be some time before any progress is made on these new projects. This news comes from Variety