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EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, Fifth Season and Makeready have acquired the rights to Final Score, a crime thriller spec from Will Hettinger, which Nick Rowland is set to direct.
The project reunites the companies with Rowland after work on a project in a similar vein — the forthcoming crime thriller She Rides Shotgun, starring Taron Egerton, for which Makeready is currently finalizing the domestic deal. News also comes after word that Makeready has extended by three years its overall deal with Fifth Season, also bringing Topic Studios into the fold for a joint venture spanning features, television, and unscripted content.
Said to be tonally in the vein of Sicario, Final Score follows Gamen (50s), the leader of the FBI’s tactical operations team, who recruits ex-Special Forces soldier Andy (30s) to join his unit as they try to take down both the mob and a gang of bank robbers. Brad Weston and Collin Creighton will produce for Makeready.
Previously staffing on Netflix’s opioid crisis drama Painkiller and Starz’s Hunting Wives, Hettinger is also known for scripting Dyersville, a forthcoming crime thriller that Netflix and the Obama’s Higher Ground swooped on earlier this year in a mid-six-figure spec deal.
Prior to directing She Rides Shotgun, based on the award-winning novel from Jordan Harper, to which Amazon holds international rights, the three-time BAFTA-nominated Rowland helmed Calm with Horses, a crime thriller starring Cosmo Jarvis, Barry Keoghan, and Liam Carney.
Fifth Season is coming off of the premiere of their Tim Robinson-Paul Rudd comedy Friendship at the Toronto Film Festival, where they sold U.S. rights to A24 in a mid-seven figure deal, as we first reported. Prior to that, they premiered their Ron Howard documentary Jim Henson Idea Man at the Cannes Film Festival ahead of a Disney+ berth. In a competitive situation earlier this month, the company secured rights to Liane Moriarty’s new novel Here One Moment, setting up the property for TV with Blossom Films and Made Up Stories, in a reunion on the heels of Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers. In September, the company picked up rights to the debut fiction novel Some Part of Her from author, showrunner, and journalist Amy Chozick of Max’s The Girls on the Bus.
Makeready saw their crime mystery Killer Heat, an adaptation of a Jo Nesbø short story starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley, and Richard Madden, premiere on Prime Video in late September, holding down the #1 film slot globally in its first two weeks of release. Currently, the company is in post on A24 horror Opus, starring John Malkovich and Ayo Edebiri, while prepping the Ben Affleck-directed Animals for Netflix. Additionally, they’re developing an English-language remake of Oscar winner Another Round, to be directed by Chris Rock, as well as an FX adaptation of the short film Sad Day, with singer-songwriter FKA Twigs and Hiro Murai.
Hettinger is represented by CAA, Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment, and Ziffren Brittenham. Rowland is repped by WME and Independent Talent Group in the UK.
