Netflix has bought Fairytale in New York, an action thriller starring Aaron Pierre and directed by the Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander, from Lionsgate, which will produce it. Deadline reported the deal on Friday 13 November, saying it followed a competitive auction in which Netflix was judged the best fit for the project. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed it the same day. The price was not disclosed.
The film takes place over Christmas Eve in New York City. Pierre plays an unassuming taxi driver who sets out on a night of revenge after a priceless gift for his estranged son is stolen. Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani wrote it as an original spec script. They also wrote John Rambo, the prequel Helander has just finished shooting, which is due in cinemas on 4 June 2027, according to Deadline.
Key facts
- Film: Fairytale in New York, action thriller set on Christmas Eve in New York City
- Deal: Netflix acquired the project from Lionsgate after a competitive auction; price undisclosed
- Talent: Aaron Pierre stars; Jalmari Helander directs an original script by Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani
- Producers: Beau Flynn (FlynnPictureCo) and Kevin King Templeton (Templeton Media), for Lionsgate
- Not announced: budget, shoot dates, release date
The terms
Netflix will distribute the film and Lionsgate will produce it. Neither company disclosed a price, a licence period or a release window. Lionsgate has made this kind of deal with Netflix before: it produced the action film War Machine for the streamer, and Erin Westerman, president of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, opened her statement by citing that film’s “extraordinary success”. She called the new project “our third collaboration with Jalmari”.
Helen Lee-Kim, Lionsgate’s president of international, closed the deal with Netflix, Deadline reported. Beau Flynn produces for FlynnPictureCo with Kevin King Templeton for Templeton Media. Scott Sheldon, Haines and Noshirvani are executive producers, and James Myers and Pavan Kalidindi will oversee production for Lionsgate.
The director
Helander first drew attention outside Finland with Rare Exports (2010), a Christmas horror film, and followed it with Big Game (2014), starring Samuel L. Jackson. Sisu, his 2022 film about a former soldier defending a haul of gold in Lapland in 1944, was released in the US by Lionsgate. Box Office Mojo estimates its worldwide gross at $14.2m, of which $7.3m, or 51%, came from North America after a $3.3m opening there. For a Finnish production with very little dialogue, earning half its total in the US and Canada is unusual, and it goes a long way to explaining why Lionsgate has kept working with him.
The star
Pierre played John Stewart in Lanterns, the HBO and DC Studios series, and had his breakout film role in Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge, also for Netflix. He appears in Rachel Morrison’s Love of Your Life, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and voiced a role in Sony Pictures Animation’s Goat. Deadline reports that he will return as John Stewart in DC Studios’ Man of Tomorrow and appears in Star Wars: Starfighter next year. He is represented by WME and Anonymous Content, among others.
What is not known
The companies have not said when or where the film will shoot, or when Netflix will release it. The budget and the price Netflix paid have not been reported, and neither has the number of bidders in the auction.
Our reading
This is the kind of package the streamers keep buying from independent studios: an original genre script, a lead on the rise and a director with a recognisable action style, assembled before a frame has been shot. For Lionsgate, a Netflix sale funds production without the marketing spend and box-office risk of a cinema release, and it keeps the studio in business with a director whose breakout it handled in the US. For Netflix, it adds a seasonal action title to a slate that increasingly relies on outside producers, as our reports on its Radford studio bid and its Ukrainian script grants show. Lionsgate is still buying for cinemas too, as it did with Alma Har’el’s Wet. The next markers are a start date and whether Netflix holds the film for a Christmas release. More in our Lionsgate coverage.
Sources
- Deadline, Aaron Pierre and Sisu director Jalmari Helander team on action thriller Fairytale in New York from Netflix and Lionsgate, 13 November 2026
- The Hollywood Reporter, Aaron Pierre starrer Fairytale in New York lands at Netflix, 13 November 2026
- Box Office Mojo, Sisu (2022), title summary (estimates)