SONY PICTURES CLASSICS SETS RELEASE DATE FOR AZAZEL JACOBS’ FRENCH EXIT STARRING MICHELLE PFEIFFER AND LUCAS HEDGES

NEW YORK (August 20, 2020) – Sony Pictures Classics announced today that Azazel Jacobs’ FRENCH EXIT will be released in theaters on February 12, 2021. This follows the news that the film will make its world premiere as the Closing Night feature at the 2020 New York Film Festival.  

Directed by Jacobs and written by award-winning novelist Patrick deWitt, FRENCH EXIT stars Oscar® nominee Michelle Pfeiffer, Oscar® nominee Lucas Hedges, Tony Award winner Tracy Letts, Danielle Macdonald, Valerie Mahaffey, Daniel di Tomasso, Susan Coyne, Imogen Poots, and Isaach de Bankolé. The film is based on deWitt’s international bestselling book of the same title, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.  

“My plan was to die before the money ran out,” says 60-year-old penniless Manhattan socialite Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer), but things didn’t go as planned. Her husband Franklin has been dead for 12 years and with his vast inheritance gone, she cashes in the last of her possessions and resolves to live out her twilight days anonymously in a borrowed apartment in Paris, accompanied by her directionless son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) and a cat named Small Frank—who may or may not embody the spirit of Frances’s dead husband (Tracy Letts).

Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film last September, shortly before production began in Montreal and Paris. A Canadian/Irish international co-production, FRENCH EXIT is produced by Elevation Pictures, Screen Siren Pictures, and Blinder Films, and executive produced by Rocket Science.

ABOUT SONY PICTURES CLASSICS  

Michael Barker and Tom Bernard serve as co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics—an autonomous division of Sony Pictures Entertainment they founded with Marcie Bloom in January 1992—which distributes, produces, and acquires independent films from around the world.  Barker and Bernard have released prestigious films that have won 39 Academy Awards® (35 of those at Sony Pictures Classics) and have garnered 175 Academy Award® nominations (149 at Sony Pictures Classics) including Best Picture nominations for CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, WHIPLASH, AMOUR, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, AN EDUCATION, CAPOTE, HOWARDS END, AND CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.   

ABOUT SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. SPE's global operations encompass motion picture production, acquisition, and distribution; television production, acquisition, and distribution; television networks; digital content creation and distribution; operation of studio facilities; and development of new entertainment products, services and technologies. SPE’s Motion Picture Group production organizations include Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation, Screen Gems, TriStar Pictures, 3000 Pictures, Stage 6 Films, AFFIRM Films, and Sony Pictures Classics. For additional information, visit http://www.sonypictures.com/corp/divisions.html.