Who are the Nee Brothers, you might ask? Well, they’re a fairly little-known director duo composed of brothers Aaron and Adam Nee. They don’t even have a lot of films under their belts. Their first film was The Last Romantic in 2006, and since then, they’ve only made five feature films. With their latest film being The Lost City, which made its debut on March 12, 2022 at SXSW. That debut actually received fairly positive reviews from critics and audiences alike. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics gave it 79% across 273 reviews, with audiences being more generous with 83% across over 2500 reviews.
So all in all, it looks like the Nee Brothers are doing pretty decently as fairly new directors. Which might explain why they’re making a new film in the form of the upcoming action-comedy film Calamity Hustle. What it doesn’t explain though is why there’s a bidding war going on for this film right now, and between 3 of the largest film studios in the world, no less.
Calamity Hustle: Sudden Bidding War Details
The Hollywood Reporter has just come out with a very interesting story about the upcoming Nee Brothers film: Calamity Hustle. Just to be clear, this film is very much upcoming. In fact, it’s so upcoming that they don’t even have a finalized script for it yet. All they have is a logline that reads: “a down-on-his-luck former Los Angeles detective-turned-private investigator who, after being shaken down by a vicious crime lord, must track down his estranged brother who is responsible for interfering with a diamond heist” and that it will star Ryan Reynolds and Channing Tatum in the starring roles, and that’s it.
Despite this though, there’s apparently a bidding war going on for Calamity Hustle. A bidding war among the 3 largest film studios in the world, really. Warner Bros., Amazon, and Netflix all apparently want this film, and they want it bad. Warner Bros. went in for $20 million per actor, while Netflix and Amazon each offered the Nee Brothers a $50 million pot to split between each actor as they saw fit. One of these companies then raised the offer to $175 million for the whole package, but the who is a mystery.
Either way, it looks like the Nee Brothers stand to make a lot of money off of Calamity Hustle. Up to $6-8 million paydays, according to The Hollywood Reporter. That’s a lot of money for these fairly new directors, but we’ll just have to see just how much it totals up to later. Tune back in to THS to find out more about Calamity Hustle and how this bidding war plays out when we do.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
