Affleck is also set to direct the film, which Damon departed due to shooting conflicts with Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. Oscar-nominated screenwriter Billy Ray (Captain Phillips, Richard Jewell) will co-write the screenplay with Connor McIntyre. Per Variety, Animals “reportedly follows a mayoral candidate whose child is kidnapped.” The X-Files alum Gillian Anderson has reportedly joined the cast to co-star with Affleck.
Affleck and Damon will produce the film through their Artists Equity banner. Artists Equity is also behind RIP, which will also premiere on Netflix. At a recent Next on Netflix event, Affleck teased RIP as a “really fun, engaging ride that keeps you guessing. It’s a compelling, complicated human drama that also hues to these elements of cinema that people have loved forever” (via People). The movie, which he described as a mix of Heat meets Narc meets Training Day, is “the seventh movie that Matt Damon and my company, Artists Equity, has made, and it really is in a lot of ways the most important for us because we’ve found some really exciting partners who are really interested in not just what has been but what could be at Netflix,” he said. “This is exactly the kind of film that we want to champion.”
In addition to Animals, Artists Equity is behind the upcoming The Accountant 2, which stars Affleck and is set to premiere at SXSW. Damon and Affleck are also producers on Bill Condon’s Kiss Of The Spider Woman, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and stars Affleck’s ex-wife Jennifer Lopez. Artists Equity previously produced Unstoppable (starring Lopez), The Instigators (starring Damon and Casey Affleck), and Small Things Like These (starring Damon’s Oppenheimer co-star Cillian Murphy).
