Sam Mendes and Focus Features Sign Two-Year Deal

By Nick Dawson On June 19, 2009

On the back of the ongoing success of Away We Go, Sam Mendes' new movie for Focus Features, the director's production company Neal Street Productions, has now signed a two-year first-look production deal with Focus.

A statement from Mendes on the deal says: “I’m absolutely thrilled to be in partnership with Focus. I have long been a huge admirer of what they do, and my experience of working with James Schamus, John Lyons and the Focus team on Away We Go has been nothing but enjoyable. I know I speak for both myself and [producing partner] Pippa Harris when I say that we can’t wait to make some more movies with them, and soon.”

Focus Features CEO James Schamus added, “After our extraordinary experience on Away We Go, we knew we would work together again with Sam. The range of Sam’s interests and skills as a filmmaker is limitless, and he is a magnet for top talent in front of and behind the camera.”

The projects that are currently being developed by Mendes in tandem with Focus include an adaptation of George Eliot's classic novel Middlemarch, which has been penned by Andrew Davies, a veteran of numerous adaptations of English 19th Century novels and who is most famous for the BBC series Pride and Prejudice, which made Colin Firth an international star. The other film on the table is an adaptation of John Williams' 1960 novel Butcher's Crossing. According to the official press release, the book is an "epic adventure set in 1870s America [that] follows Will Andrews as he forsakes his Harvard education and lands in the small Kansas town of Butcher’s Crossing, where he is drawn into a sweeping hunt for one of the last great buffalo herds."