Sony’s Screen Gems Wins John David Washington Horror Package ‘Mime’ From ‘Nanny’ Filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu & Producers Matt Tolmach & Scott Derrickson

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Screen Gems has beat out Amazon and Searchlight for Mime, a supernatural horror package that will star Tenet‘s John David Washington, with Nikyatu Jusu (Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Nanny) directing. There’s no official logline, but we hear it’s a movie set in a New York City apartment complex in the middle of a heat wave blackout. Stephen Herman wrote the screenplay based on his original idea. We understand that Mime is in active development but the intention is that the feature will shoot in the spring. Producers are Matt Tolmach and Camila Grove, and Scott Derrickson under his Crooked highway banner. Washington is also producing. Screen Gems has a first-look deal with Derrickson. Tolmach is producing Jumanji: Open World which hits theaters on Christmas Day. It’s the next installment in that $ 2 billion-plus grossing franchise directed by Jake Kasdan and starring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan. Watch on Deadline Blumhouse and Amazon’s Prime Video won the global rights to Nanny for $7 million out of Sundance 2022 after it in played in the festival’s U.S. Dramatic Competition and won the Grand Jury Prize, the first horror film to take the festival’s top honor. That pic starred Anna Diop (Us) as a Senegalese immigrant nanny, piecing together a new life in New York City while caring for the child of an Upper East Side family, who is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter her American Dream. Michelle Monaghan, Sinqua Walls, Morgan Spector and Rose Decker also starred. Nanny repped Jusu’s feature directorial debut. Nikyatu Jusu Jusu is repped by CAA, Gaby Mena and Natalia Williams at M88, and Andre Des Rochers and Kristina Chen at Granderson Des Rochers. Washington is repped by WME. Herman is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone. The scribe wrote 2022’s Blank and 2020’s Prime Video title Black Box.