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Amazon MGM’s United Artists Wins ‘Lizard Music’ With Benny Safdie Directing and Dwayne Johnson Starring

The project reunites the duo after The Smashing Machine for a family-tinged fantasy drawn from a cult novel.

Overview

  • United Artists secured the film in a competitive bid, with Scott Stuber leading the acquisition and producing for the label.
  • Benny Safdie will write and direct, and Dwayne Johnson is attached to play the eccentric septuagenarian known as the Chicken Man.
  • The movie adapts Daniel Pinkwater’s Lizard Music, following a boy who discovers a secret broadcast of lizards playing otherworldly music and teams up with Chicken Man and his 111-year-old chicken, Claudia.
  • Producers include Stuber and Nick Nesbitt for United Artists, Safdie for Out for the Count Productions, Johnson for Seven Bucks Productions, and David Koplan for Magnetic Fields Entertainment.
  • The package marks a Safdie–Johnson reunion after The Smashing Machine’s awards buzz despite low box-office returns, and it remains in development with no casting additions, start date, or release plan announced.