EXCLUSIVE: Two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali (Leave the World Behind) has signed on to star in Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, a new film written and to be directed for Amazon MGM Studios‘ Orion Pictures by Berlin prize-winner Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli).
Plot details for the film are being kept under wraps. Producers include Two & Two Pictures’ Lucan Toh and Babak Anvari, as well as Tariq.
Interestingly, the project serves as a reunion of sorts for Ali and Tariq. In 2021, Tariq was tapped to direct Marvel Studios’ long-anticipated Blade reboot, with Ali set to star. However, the director departed the film just over a year later, and the project remains in limbo.
An Oscar winner for his roles in Moonlight and Green Book, Ali is coming off of Sam Esmail’s smash hit thriller Leave the World Behind, which amassed 121 million views within a month on Netflix and is now the fifth most streamed English-language film on the platform. Next up, he’ll be seen starring opposite Scarlett Johansson in Jurassic World Rebirth, which Universal releases on July 2.
Tariq’s debut feature film, Mogul Mowgli, premiered at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival and took home the Critics Award. Riz Ahmed co-wrote and stars in the lauded drama, which tells the story of Zed, a British-Pakistani rapper on the verge of his big break when he is suddenly struck by a debilitating autoimmune disease. Tariq began his career in the documentary space, with works including These Birds Walk and Ghosts of Sugar Land. He also directed the pilot block for Ahmed’s upcoming Amazon series Quarter Life.
Recent projects from Two & Two Pictures include Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s paramedic thriller Asphalt City, which premiered in competition at Cannes; Yorgos Zois’ Arcadia, which premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival; Max & Sam Eggers’ debut film The Front Room for A24; and Anvari’s upcoming thriller, Hallow Road, starring Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, which is slated to premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival.
Orion is the studio behind Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’s adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, which is currently nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Most recently taking to Prime Video to debut Nicholas Stoller’s rom-com You’re Cordially Invited, Amazon MGM Studios is next set to release Reema Kagti’s TIFF Gala selection Superboys of Malegaon on February 28.
Ali is represented by Cognition and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern; Tariq by WME, Range Media Partners, and attorneys Daniel Passman and Tara Kole at Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.
