Latest in Focus Features

“This is a love letter to Black women,” Da’Vine Joy Randolph said backstage at the Academy Awards, having just collected her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Holdovers. Related Stories <a href="https://deadline.com/category/news/" class="c-span__link a-font-accent-bold-xs u-color-brand-red u-text-transform-uppercase…

Focus Features has firmed up release plans for Conclave, the papal thriller marking filmmaker Edward Berger’s follow-up to his 2022 Oscar winner All Quiet on the Western Front. An adaptation of Robert Harris’ same-name bestseller, penned by Peter Straughan, the film releases in theaters in New York and…

By any indicator, filmmaker Sean Wang has had a career year–and we're only in Month Two. His narrative feature debut, Dìdi, captured the Audience Award and a Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble in the US Dramatic Competition at the recently concluded Sundance Film Festival, and that same week, he earned…

"It genuinely feels like things are happening in real time." That's Da'Vine Joy Randolph's take on how her wise-beyond-years private school cafeteria lady Mary was able to forge a solid chemistry with Paul Giamatti’s curmudgeon ancient civilizations instructor Paul Hunham in Focus Features' The Holdov…

Focus Features will open its Sundance Film Festival acquisition Dìdi on July 26. The movie from Oscar nominee Sean Wang premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical and audience acclaim, winning both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury…

For David Hemingson, a veteran of the TV world who collaborated with Alexander Payne for the first time as the writer-producer of his Christmas found family dramedy The Holdovers, one of the great challenges of working in film is achieving a certain level of economy in the storytelling. “Especially…

Focus Features said Wednesday that it has acquired global rights on Sean Wang’s Dìdi, which won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast at the just-concluded Sundance Film Festival. Last week, Wang was nominated for an Oscar for his documentary…

EXCLUSIVE: Focus Features has won a bidding battle for Black Bag, a package for a spy thriller film that Steven Soderbergh will direct this summer in Europe from a David Koepp script, with Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender attached to star. Casey Silver and Greg Jacobs are producing…

EXCLUSIVE: Ahead of Focus Features’ February 23rd release of Drive-Away Dolls, the road-trip caper marking her first collaboration with Academy Award winner Ethan Coen, Margaret Qualley has been set to star in Honey Don’t!, the filmmaker’s latest for the same studio. Joining Qualley in the cast are…

After landing his second Oscar nomination on Tuesday morning for his starring turn in Alexander Payne’s dramedy The Holdovers, Paul Giamatti spoke with Deadline about the reasons horror is currently at top of mind for him, the filmmakers active in that genre today that he’d most like to work with, his…

Following the announcement of his Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination Tuesday morning, The Holdovers screenwriter David Hemingson revealed to Deadline that some dialogue and scenes were taken verbatim from his own life. Hemingson had originally written a pilot based on his own boarding school…

Once upon a time, you could attend a dozen afterparties following a Golden Globes ceremony and never leave the Beverly Hilton, they were all under one roof. Cities were constructed up on the actual roof or atop the parking lot. You'd emerge from the show and trot downstairs to HBO. Then you'd queue…