Michael Shanks, the filmmaker behind last year’s cult horror fave Together, has teamed up with Adam McKay, the multi-faceted writer-director-producer behind movies such as Vice and Don’t Look Up, for a mystery project.
Sony Pictures has picked up an untitled sci-fi comedy that will be written by Shanks that has McKay attached to direct.
McKay is producing the feature with Todd Schulman via the duo’s Hyperobject Industries banner.
Andrew Mittman, who is one of the executive producers on Wednesday and involved in the development of Tim Burton’s remake of B-movie classic Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman, is also producing via his 1.21 Pictures. The company’s Kai Dolbashian will exec produce. The two worked in the same capacity with Shanks on Together.
Details on the project are being kept under wraps but it is described as a sci-fi comedy.
Shanks got his start making YouTube and online shorts before making his feature directorial debut with Together, the unique body horror that starred Dave Franco and Alison Brie. The movie premiered at the 2025 edition of the Sundance Film Festival where it sparked a bidding war, with Neon ultimately picking it up in a $17 million deal.
His next film is due to be a feature project titled Hotel, Hotel, Hotel, Hotel, a mind-bending sci-fi thriller set up at A24 and whose script, which he wrote, was on the 2021 Black List. The project was the first team up for the writer-director with McKay and Schulman, who are among those producing Hotel.
McKay, whose films run the genre gamut from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights to The Big Short and Vice to episodes of Succession and Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. He last directed 2021’s Don’t Look Up, a satire with an A-list cast that became one of Netflix’s most watched movies.
Hyperobject remains a busy banner. Among its upcoming projects is a mini-series centered on Jeffey Epstein, based on the book Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story by Julie K. Brown, with Laura Dern on board to star.
Shanks is repped by WME and Untitled. McKay is repped by CAA and Johnson Shapiro.
