Scott Stuber

Doesn't ring a bell.

No, Steven Spielberg, Amazon Studios and MGM are actually, producer Scott Stuber as well, are going to bring the Mandela catalog to life.

And this is something that is a very, very popular one of these analog horror type YouTube channels that is not just influential.

Like a lot of the other big ones that are coming and in the success in the wake of Back Rooms and Obsession, some of these other ones that are trying to get adapted, they'll all point to Mandela and like Gemini Home Entertainment.

I pitched every toy company, or, sorry, every, uh, uh, studio.

And we finally, uh, did a deal with Scott Stuber with his production company at Universal.

We did a deal with Universal, and we spent years developing the script.

Three, two scripts, two different directors.

His Lance Armstrong biopic starring Austin Butler is lining up for a January production.

The script is by Zach Balin with Scott Stuber, Nick Nesbitt producing, and Apple Original Films holding the rights after a competitive bidding process broke out.

So the film is being described as a blend of high-octane sports drama and a rise and fall character study.

Of course, just the story of Lance Armstrong.

This is pre anything.

And part of it was the training and coming up under Mary Parent and Scott Stuber.

And like, you know, it is we are Fort Knox.

Yeah.

47 Ronin also didn't end up with New Line, where Walter Hamada worked.

Instead, the project was bought and produced by Scott Stuber, who you might remember from our episodes on Rebel Moon.

In 2017, Stuber became Netflix head of original films, but a decade before that, he was heading up his own company, creatively named Stuber Productions, which had a deal with Universal.

So when Stuber came onto 47 Ronin as a producer, it became a Universal film.

And when 47 Ronin was announced as Universal's next big thing in December 2008, Scott Stuber was the one responsible for the big name attached to the film from the very beginning, Keanu Reeves.

Much hay has been made of the decision to cast Reeves, who is not Japanese, as the lead in a classic Japanese story, with Chris Morgan specifically tailoring the script to add in a mixed-race character who Reeves could play.

But in my opinion, that focus on Keanu's casting ignores the fact that nearly every other creative involved with this film, with the exception of Walter Hamada, was also not Japanese.

It is one of the better-directed sequences in the film, but Kai still does nothing specific, and Chikara actually loses his position of leadership on the B team and is just kind of there, too.

But then he was also writing big projects.

And I would go into notes meeting where it would just be him, Scott Stuber, and Steve Levinson, who's Mark Wahlberg's partner.

And what that did, I would go into pitches with him.

It got me really comfortable being in those rooms.

That makes sense.

Former Netflix film chief Scott Stuber echoed this in 2023, discussing the interesting narrative form of the whole cycle and their desire to break the whole arc of all of it.

They are treating this as one massive, continuous tapestry.

But treating it as a continuous tapestry is exactly why the next major detail from the source material is so mind-bending.

The book was published in May 2025.

Almost instantaneously, Amazon MGM Studios, alongside Scott Stuber's United Artists and Something Happy Productions scooped it up.

I mean, the ink was barely dry on the hardcover before the studio executives were signing the option agreements.

They bypassed the traditional wait and see approach that usually governs literary acquisitions.