EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a big one that has just come together at Focus Features and Amblin: Till and Clemency filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu will direct and co-adapt with Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman with Oscar nominee Jeffrey Wright and Oscar winner Octavia Spencer starring.
Wright will play the legendary role of Willy Loman while Spencer will portray his Linda Loman.
Chukwu
Joshua Kissi
The 1949 Pulitzer Prize winning two-act play first premiered on Broadway in February 1949 and ran for 742 performances. The play follows aging traveling salesman Willy Loman who tries to fix his life with the family he always put down as he put work first. The play, which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play, focuses on themes of infidelity, truth and the American Dream. There have been myriad adaptations for TV with Dustin Hoffman, Warren Mitchell, Brian Dennehy playing Willy Loman. The 1951 feature adaptation starred Frederic March as Willy and was nominated for five Academy Awards.
Producers are Cindy Tolan, Kristie Macosko Krieger via Amblin Entertainment and Spencer via Orit Entertainment. Tony Kushner will also serve as a producer. Focus Features and Amblin have the upcoming TIFF world premiere Hamnet from Oscar winner Chloé Zhao, based on the New York Times bestselling novel, starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. That pic is set for release on Nov. 27.
Wright was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for American Fiction last year. He is 7x Primetime Emmy nominee, two of them this year for HBO’s The Last of Us (Guest Actor Drama) and Disney+/Marvel Studios’ What If…? (Outstanding Character Voice-Over), as well as Primetime Emmy Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie winner for HBO’s feature TV take of Kushner’s Angels of America. He recently starred in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme and Paramount+’s The Agency opposite Richard Gere and Michael Fassbender.
Spencer won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Help. Her feature credits also include Hidden Figures, Ma, The Shack and The Shape of Water. She also won Supporting Actress awards at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, BAFTAs, and SAGs for The Help in addition to a SAG ensemble awards. She’s a two time Emmy nominee for Lost Women of Highway 20 and the Netflix miniseries, Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker.
Chukwu won the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Dramatic Prize for Clemency in 2019 which went on to receive an Independent Spirit nomination for Best Screenplay.
Kushner is a 4x Oscar nominee for the adapted screenplays of Lincoln and Munich, the original screenplay for The Fablemans as well as Best Picture for that Steven Spielberg directed movie.
Wright is represented by CAA, Strategic Public Relations and Jackoway Austen Tyerman. Spencer is represented by CAA, Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner & Klein. Chukwu is represented by Entertainment 360, CAA and The Gochman Law Group. Kushner is represented by CAA and Schreck Rose Dapello Adams Berlin & Dunham.
Upcoming releases from Focus Features include Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t! opening this weekend, the final chapter of the global franchise Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale; Ronan Day-Lewis’ directorial debut Anemone, starring and co-written by Daniel Day-Lewis; Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia, starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons; and Song Sung Blue, starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
