Sony Classics’ ‘French Exit’ with Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges gets release date
Sony Pictures Classics announced today that Azazel Jacobs’ French Exit will be released in theaters on February 12, 2021, taking full advantage of the extended eligibility period for the 93rd Academy Awards. 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 three-time 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.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
- 2026 Tribeca Festival Celebrates 25th Anniversary with World Premieres of ‘Hadestown: The Musical,’ ‘Earth, Wind & Fire’ Doc - April 16, 2026
- ‘Beef’ Season 2 Review: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton Sink Their Teeth Into Lee Sung Jin’s Meaty Morality Tale [A-] - April 16, 2026
- George Clooney to be Honored at 51st Chaplin Award Gala by Stephen Colbert, Sam Rockwell and More - April 15, 2026
2026 Tonys: Laurie Metcalf (‘Little Bear Ridge Road,’ ‘Death of a Salesman’) May Join Elite Group of Double-Nominated Performers 
2026 Tribeca Festival Celebrates 25th Anniversary with World Premieres of ‘Hadestown: The Musical,’ ‘Earth, Wind & Fire’ Doc 
Director Watch Podcast Ep. 149 – ‘Killer of Sheep’ (Charles Burnett, 1978) 
‘Lee Cronin’s The Mummy’ Review: Careful the Spell You Cast, Children Will Listen (and Sometimes Kill) [C]