Behind the Scenes with Jungle Cruise and American Rust

GANGS OF LONDON ON PAUSE: Gangs of London is the latest big UK production to be put on pause amid a rise in COVID cases. The Sky/AMC gangland drama shut down after a crew member tested positive Thursday. This comes after Bridgerton and The House of the Dragon suffered the same fate.  Sky spokeswoman said: “Throughout this time, the safety of our colleagues and customers remains our number one priority. Gangs of London S2 production has temporarily been suspended with cast and crew now self-isolating. We will return to production as soon as it is safe to do so.”

AMERICAN RUST TRAILER DROPS: Showtime released a trailer for American Rust, starring Jeff Daniels and Maura Tierney, and based on the Philipp Meyer novel of the same name. The series bows September 12^th.

JUNGLE CRUISE DIRECTOR LEVELS UP: Jaume Collet-Serra can’t say no to a good gig, he tells Variety. He directed well-regarded films like The Commuter, Run All Night, The Shallows, and now is tackling the franchise biz in the Jungle Cruise. He told Variety: “There have been opportunities to do big movies before, but they were all sequels. And I wanted my first big movie to be an original piece, so I’d been deliberately waiting for something like Jungle Cruise for many years. I wanted it to be something that was purely mine. I read this script and saw that opportunity that I had been waiting for, to really start something from scratch. I wanted to create a world that didn’t exist, and you know that when Disney is going to do something, they do it right.” After connecting with the star Dwayne Johnson, the pair tackled DC’s Black Adam. He told Variety: “Having just done a romantic adventure comedy where he’s very light, I was really attracted to getting the dark version of Dwayne. Basically, turning him into Clint Eastwood in a Western. I was like, ‘You’re like the Dirty Harry of superheroes.’ I didn’t have to convince people that I was right for this one in the same way that I did for ‘Jungle Cruise.’ It’s like things I’ve done with Liam [Neeson], that tough-guy antihero who has a heart. The world is not black and white. The world is in gray areas, so you need these people that are riding that gray area.”

LET’S GO: An open letter from members of the Thai crew working on the Apple TV Plus series Shantaram want the government to restart the production. They claim the Thai government is falsely promoting the country as a destination for productions, while simultaneously shutting down theirs and ignoring COVID-safe work rules. Charlie Hunnam stars in the production, which follows the story of a man on the run from prison.