It’s been almost a decade since Paul Dano and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert blew away Sundance Film Festival attendees with Swiss Army Man, but now the trio now looks ready to reunite on Dano’s next director outing. Sources tell Deadline that Dano is set to write and in talks to direct a new untitled comedy for Universal Pictures, with Kwan, Scheinert and their partner Jonathan Wang producing through their Playgrounds banner. Dano is also in talks to produce.
Plot details are being kept under wraps other then it being a high-concept, original comedy. The Daniels have a first-look deal at the studio and, while they are still deep in development on a follow-up to their Oscar Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once, this film would mark one of the first major projects they are solely producing under the deal. Senior EVP Production Development Erik Baiers will oversee the project for the studio.
Swiss Army Man was one of the big winners of the 2016 Sundance; it starred Dano and Daniel Radcliffe and was written and directed by duo known as The Daniels. Dano was already an established actor at the time, but the film helped launch The Daniels’ career leading to Everything Everywhere, which stormed the 2023 Oscars will 11 nominations and seven wins including for Director and Original Screenplay.
Kwan and Scheinert are now reuniting with Dano following his acclaimed 2018 drama Wildlife. The film was written and directed by Dano and starred Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal, earned Dano strong reviews when it premiered at Sundance 2018.
Since then, Dano has kept busy on the acting front, starring in the Showtime limited series Escape from Dannemora with Benicio Del Toro and Patricia Arquette and directed by Ben Stiller, earning Dano an Emmy nomination.
Dano also starred opposite Robert Pattinson in Warner Bros’ The Batman in which he played the iconic Riddler. He also starred alongside Michelle Williams in Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans, written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner, in which he played a character loosely based on Spielberg’s father.
Dano also starred opposite Seth Rogen and America Ferrara in Craig Gillespie’s comedy Dumb Money in which he played Keith Gill, a YouTuber who put all of his money into GameStop stock and sparked a movement on Reddit, flipping Wall Street on its head. He recurred on Amazon’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith series and had a cameo in the first episode of the Apple TV+ comedy The Studio. He just completed shooting the Olivier Assayas film The Wizard of the Kremlin in which he plays the title character amongst a cast that includes Jude Law, Alicia Vikander and Jeffrey Wright.
Dano is represented by WME, Anonymous Content and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher. The Daniels and Playgrounds are represented by Mosaic and Yorn, Levine, Barnes, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich, Goodell & Gellman. Wang is represented by Granderson Des Rochers.
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