Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions is slimming down.
The genre-skewing banner, which has a first-look deal at Universal, has quietly let go of three members its development team, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
It is unclear who was let go, but insiders say that the development department will maintain a staff of four and is still receiving new material. The move has been described as a “refocusing” by those in the know. Sources also say Peele wants to be take a more hands-on involvement in the development of projects.
The layoffs may be an acknowledgement of business realities for the banner that became a Hollywood name thanks to Peele’s success in the wake of Get Out and Us. In 2019, Peele signed a rich, five-year deal with Universal, with Monkeypaw becoming one of the bigger-staffed companies of its type in town.
Peele reupped in 2024, but his deal was scaled back, according to sources. It didn’t help that the banner’s output wasn’t prolific. Apart from 2022’s Nope, which Peele wrote and directed, the only movie the company produced was Him, the troubled football horror movie that failed at the box office. (Candyman, released in 2021, was already in production when the original five-year deal was made.) The company was also involved in several shows, Lovecraft Country and Hunters, among them.
Adding to the mire is Peele’s directorial follow-up to Nope, which has been stuck in script development limbo for years. A release for December 2024 was originally scheduled, then it was pushed to 2026, then taken off the calendar entirely.
In the end, the company was described as too bloated for its current output.
The slimming down is described as similar to the situation recently faced by Bad Robot, the production banner run by J.J. Abrams. That company scaled down its operations as Abrams worked on fewer movies and TV shows while planning a movie to New York.
