Focus Features sets awards corridor release for Alexander Payne’s ‘The Holdovers’

Focus Features has set a limited November 10 theatrical release for Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers in the middle of next awards season and will expand wide on November 22 heading into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The studio paid around $30m for the comedy drama after an off-festival buyers screening at TIFF last September. Screen understands members of the public were invited so the film’s financier-producer Miramax and sales agent CAA Media Finance could gauge how it might play in front of a paying audience.

Focus acquired worldwide rights excluding Middle East and Turkey – where BeIN Media Group, the 51% majority owner of Miramax – will distribute. Universal Pictures International handles international distribution.

Payne reunites with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti in the 1970-set story about an unpopular New England prep schoolteacher forced to spend Christmas holidays with a stranded, unruly student and the school’s head cook whose son has just died in the Vietnam War. The cast includes Da’Vine Joy Randolph and newcomer Dominic Sessa.

David Hemingson wrote the screenplay and Mark Johnson, Miramax CEO Bill Block and Hemingson served as producers. Chris Stinson, Tom Williams, Andrew Golov and Thom Zadra served as executive producers.