Yahoo Lifestyle Scott Strauss’s Badlands Snaps Up Jayson Rothwell Pitch For Creature Feature ‘Lions, Tigers, And Bears’
EXCLUSIVE: Badlands, the recently launched indie genre label of longtime Sony exec Strauss and Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee’s Thunder Road, has acquired Jayson Rothwell’s pitch for Lions, Tigers, and Bears, a film inspired by a true story from 2001, involving a lion, tiger, and bear rescued from a drug dealer’s house in Atlanta.
In the pitch, the unsavory characters keeping the animals in captivity get their just desserts when these ultimate predators break free and team up for revenge. In real life, the animals continued to live together and formed a lifelong bond in sanctuary.
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The project marks Badlands’ second creature feature collaboration with Rothwell, on the heels of horror thriller Arachnid, directed by Ángel Gómez Hernández and starring Matilda Lutz, which recently wrapped production. Rothwell is otherwise best known for penning Netflix’s Jonas Åkerlund action thriller Polar, starring Mads Mikkelsen.
“When I heard the pitch and saw the teaser for LIONS, TIGERS, AND BEARS, I had to have it,” Strauss told Deadline. “Jayson’s unique voice is just perfect to bring it to life. Who isn’t going to a movie called LIONS, TIGERS, AND BEARS? It’s big summer fun.”
We were first to report on the 2024 launch of Badlands, which has backing from Andrew Schwartzberg and Jon Shiffman’s Renegade Capital. The company commences production on Dangerous Games To Play, also directed by Hernández, this summer and shoots Hong Won-ki’s K-pop thriller Perfect Girl this fall.
Rothwell is repped by Syndicate Entertainment and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Badlands and Thunder Road are represented by CAA Media Finance.
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