Focus Features’ ongoing identity crisis worsened Thursday, as the specialty unit behind “The Theory of Everything,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Moonrise Kingdom” underwent its second major management shakeup in less than three years.
Focus CEO Peter Schlessel, who replaced founder James Schamus in 2013, is being ousted as part of a drastic housecleaning by parent Universal Pictures. The studio is merging the label with Universal Pictures International Productions (Upip), in an attempt to make the unit more global and artistically relevant after a series of highly touted awards-season pictures such as “The Danish Girl” and “Suffragette” collapsed at the box office. Upip Managing Director Peter Kujawski will now be tasked with being chairman of the global unit.
The bloodletting, which is also resulting in the loss of COO Adrian Alperovich, marketing president Christine Birch and acquisitions chief Lia Buman, seems to be an acknowledgment by Universal’s brass that it erred in...
Focus CEO Peter Schlessel, who replaced founder James Schamus in 2013, is being ousted as part of a drastic housecleaning by parent Universal Pictures. The studio is merging the label with Universal Pictures International Productions (Upip), in an attempt to make the unit more global and artistically relevant after a series of highly touted awards-season pictures such as “The Danish Girl” and “Suffragette” collapsed at the box office. Upip Managing Director Peter Kujawski will now be tasked with being chairman of the global unit.
The bloodletting, which is also resulting in the loss of COO Adrian Alperovich, marketing president Christine Birch and acquisitions chief Lia Buman, seems to be an acknowledgment by Universal’s brass that it erred in...
- 2/4/2016
- by Brent Lang
- Variety - Film News
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