Netflix is renewing its vows with Mark and Jay Duplass. The brothers were one of the earliest adopters of the platform as a bona fide distribution model for original film and television (their film The Puffy Chair from 2005 was actually Netflix’s first feature-film acquisition), signing a four-picture deal with the digital studio in 2015. Today, Variety reports that Mark and Jay are recommitting to Netflix with a contract granting the streamer worldwide exclusive rights to their next four films.
The first project under the deal has already wrapped production, and even though it doesn’t have a title, it stars Ray Romano and “centers on themes of friendship, mortality, and made-up sports,” which sounds so Duplassian it’s like those nouns were pulled from a Duplass-themed bingo board. The Romano comedy was directed by Alex Lehmann, who worked with the brothers on Blue Jay, from a script written by Mark. A pair of Duplass-produced movies, Duck Butter and Outside In, are also expected to debut on Netflix this year, but those films fall under their previous deal. So don’t worry: You’ve still got at least four more Duplass-Netflix collaborations coming after them.
