The Hero Nation Index is a Monday roundup of news from Deadline’s coverage of the genre sector (sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, horror, and animation).  GET WITH IT: The highest-grossing R-rated horror film in Hollywood history (if tallied by unadjusted international grosses) is It, the terrific 2017 release from Warner…

EXCLUSIVE: Gabriel Basso has been set by director Ron Howard for the lead role of J.D Wade in Hillbilly Elegy for Netflix. Basso will star opposite Amy Adams and Glenn Close for director Ron Howard. Basso previously co-starred in J.J. Abrams's Super 8, Jordan Vogt-Robert's The Kings of Summer and The Whole Truth…

Glenn Close has joined Amy Adams in Ron Howard and Netflix’s anticipated Hillbilly Elegy movie. Vanessa Taylor (The Shape Of Water) has adapted the screenplay based on the acclaimed novel by J.D. Vance. Howard is producing with Brian Grazer and Karen Lunder for Imagine Entertainment. Julie Oh and J.D. Vance are…

Amy Adams has signed on to star in the Ron Howard-directed Hillbilly Elegy, the high budget adaption to J.D. Vance's bestselling memoir from Netflix. It’s a modern exploration of the American Dream and three generations of an Appalachian family as told by its youngest member, a Yale Law student forced to return to his…

Amy Adams has signed a first-look deal with HBO and launched new production company Bond Group Entertainment with her manager Stacy O’Neil. HBO also announced the first project under the deal, Poisonwood Bible, based on the Barbara Kingsolver novel, which is being developed as a limited series. In addition, Bond Group…

Ron Suskind has closely covered Dick Cheney and the George W Bush White House as a journalist and author of The One Percent Doctrine and The Price Of Loyalty, and he was the executive producer of the Emmy-winning Oscar-nominated feature documentary Life, Animated. His bold reporting included an inflammatory report that…

When it came to constructing a biopic about former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, “the lynchpin of the entire movie is Lynne Cheney” asserts Vice filmmaker Adam McKay. “One of the tricks we ran up against in this film was according to the Syd Field-McKee kind of model of storytelling, Dick Cheney doesn’t have a…

Last time Adam McKay crashed the Oscar party with The Big Short, his inventive dissection of the meltdown of the global economy in 2008 got a Best Picture nomination and McKay's first Oscar for script. He's back with the latecomer Vice, cleverly mixing humor and inventive narrative techniques to show how Dick Cheney…

Amy Adams had a good morning with the Golden Globes nominations, one of only two people this year nominated three times. The other is Alfonso Cuarón, nominated in Best Foreign Film and in the writing and directing categories for Roma. Adams is nominated in the Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Lynne Cheney…

EXCLUSIVE: Many directors can believe they put their hearts into their movies, but on Vice, Adam McKay came closer than most any of them. Similar to Dick Cheney — whose trouble with heart attacks before he finally got a heart transplant are well known — McKay suffered a heart attack during the making of the film. And…

One of the last shoes to drop in this year’s Oscar race just dropped. Annapurna skipped the Fall Festival circuit and decided instead to take over the Bruin Theatre in Westwood today to put Adam McKay’s Vice (just finished a couple of days ago) out to the world. Judging by the reaction to this afternoon’s…

At Deadline’s The Contenders Los Angeles today, Annapurna Pictures showed off two dramas from their impressive awards-season slate, and a unifying concern emerged: The American Dream, and the ways it has changed over time. While members of the privileged class have bent it into a new, baser shape, for those less…