Jason Bateman says his next directing job will be The Partner, a John Grisham adaptation set to follow The Cackling of the Dodos. Tom Holland will star as Biloxi lawyer Patrick Lanigan, and Bateman said Holland brought the project to him.
That puts Bateman at the center of two vastly diverse limited series in Emmy contention right now, with DTF St. Louis and Black Rabbit both in the conversation while he lines up new work behind the camera. He said he is looking forward to working with Holland and described the fit in genre terms that point toward a slick, modern thriller rather than a straight legal drama.
The move is notable because Bateman is already being recognized for directing Black Rabbit, while his next directing stretch appears to run through a dark comedy about farmers who discover a body in a grain bin before he turns to Grisham. He said The Cackling of the Dodos, which stars Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell, comes first, which means The Partner is next in line but not yet on a production calendar.
Bateman’s recent work has made that range even clearer. In HBO Max’s DTF St. Louis, he plays Clark, a guileless weatherman swept into a murder mystery alongside David Harbour and Linda Cardellini. In Netflix’s Black Rabbit, he plays Vince, a gambler who drags down a New York restaurant, and he both produced and directed the series, earning DGA and Actor Award nominations for it.
He has been open about how he approaches sets. Bateman said he tries hardest not to be an a–hole because an a–hole can throw off an already fragile environment, a line that fits with the discipline he says he learned long before these projects. He pointed back to a year on Little House on the Prairie with Michael Landon, whom he described as kind to everybody, and to This Can’t Be Love, where Katharine Hepburn told him, “Oh, stop acting!”
For now, the immediate takeaway is simple: Bateman is not narrowing his lane, he is widening it. The next concrete step is The Cackling of the Dodos, and after that comes The Partner, with Holland attached and Bateman now publicly committed to directing it.
