Teyana Taylor is circling to star in The Parlay, the new Amazon MGM Studios and HyperObject Industries feature that reunites Daniel Kaluuya with Shaka King. The project is being billed as an action crime thriller, but its plot is being kept secret.
That is enough to put Taylor back at the center of a film conversation that already has a built-in audience: she broke out in A Thousand and One in 2023 and has kept moving with The Rip, All’s Fair, Straw, Scary Movie 6 and the upcoming Kevin Hart film 72 Hours. She is also preparing to make her feature directorial debut with Paramount’s Get Lite, due out in theaters in 2027, which makes the timing of this new casting talk especially sharp for someone trying to widen her lane on both sides of the camera.
For Kaluuya, The Parlay extends a partnership with King that already produced Judas and the Black Messiah, the film that earned Kaluuya an Oscar and finished with six Oscar noms and two wins, including H.E.R.’s original song Fight for You. This time, the film is based on an original spec by Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie, with Akers, Bronkie and King revising it, and Kaluuya producing alongside HyperObject Industries’ Adam McKay and Todd Schulman, I’d Watch That’s King and Brandon Harris, and 59% Productions.
The catch is that Taylor is still only circling the project, not officially attached, even as the film is being discussed like a package that is close to taking shape. That matters because the story is already being framed around a possible reunion on one side and a rising multi-hyphenate on the other, but the next real update will be whether the talks turn into a formal role — and what part Taylor would actually play once the secrecy around The Parlay finally lifts.
Kaluuya’s own slate helps explain why the film is drawing attention now. He will next be seen in Chris Rock-directed Misty Green and in A24’s Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel, and he is also co-writing a Spider-Punk film for Sony Pictures Animation while producing a live-action Barney movie under his 59% Productions banner. In that context, The Parlay looks less like a one-off and more like another turn in a career built on making each new project count before a frame has even been shot.
