Apple Original Films has landed “Connector”, a 1970s New York drama with Brad Pitt starring and Sound of Metal director Darius Marder directing.
The project reunites Apple with Pitt’s Plan B after the record-breaking F1 and makes it Marder’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning debut. TheWrap says Apple announced the deal on Thursday, 12 November, after Deadline first reported it as an exclusive.
Pitt will star as the ironworker and also produce for Plan B, alongside his partners Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner. Marder is set to direct from a script he co-wrote with his sister, Nina Marder, and will also produce. Apple Studios is the studio behind the project.
Connector” is a 1970s’ NYC epic about a working class legend, a sky-walking ironworker who takes on forces larger than himself.
TheWrap, describing the film
Deadline says plainly that the film is in development, and it has no release date or budget yet. Its sources say Pitt, Plan B, and Marder had discussed the project for some time. Once the latest draft came in, Pitt was “high on potentially making it the next thing he would shoot in 2027”. The Playlist goes further, reporting that Apple will fast-track the film so it’s the first thing Pitt shoots in 2027, but Apple hasn’t confirmed any shoot dates.
Marder’s track record explains the interest. His debut narrative feature, Sound of Metal, starred Riz Ahmed as a drummer who goes deaf. It earned six Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay) and won Oscars for Best Sound and Best Film Editing. Marder also co-wrote The Place Beyond the Pines.
For Apple, “Connector” extends a partnership that has already produced a hit. F1 became the highest-grossing sports feature of all time and received a Best Picture nomination. IndieWire puts its worldwide box office at $634.1 million. It was one of the few films Apple still released in cinemas, with Warner Bros as partner, before it arrived on Apple TV.
Apple and Plan B have two more films in the pipeline. Apple Original Films will soon release a Mark Wahlberg-led feature from Plan B, written and directed by Stephen Chbosky, titled Weekend Warriors according to The Playlist. Apple Original Films also recently landed The Waffle House Index, with Plan B attached to produce and Inde Navarrette attached to star.
Pitt’s calendar is crowded, though. Deadline reports that David Fincher’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth opens exclusively on IMAX on 25 November and begins streaming on Netflix on 23 December. He’s set for The Riders, an A24 film directed by Edward Berger, next year. Berger is attached to direct the World War Z sequel, which Paramount confirmed at CinemaCon, 13 years after the first film.
