In a massive $ 30 million deal, Focus Features lands Miramax Alexander Payne-Paul Giamatti Reteam “The Holdovers” after Toronto Buyers Screening

exclusive: The biggest deal ever made in Toronto will be on a film that is not on the Toronto Film Festival bill. I learned that Focus Features is closing a $ 30 million worldwide deal with Miramax’s Bill Block and CAA Media Finance. leftovers, after a careful selection of buyers here on Sunday. Focus will release the film in theaters and the Middle East is the only place not included in the deal. The film marks the second union of directors Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti, who collaborated on the memorable 2004 wine-tasting road comedy Sideways, a film that won both Payne and Jim Taylor Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay. Written by David Heminson leftovers Written and produced by Mark Johnson, Block and Hemmingson. The plan will be unveiled at the end of 2023.

leftovers is a comedy with the gritty and down-to-earth characters from Payne’s past films, including Nebraska, Descendants Y next to. Giamatti plays a universally hated teacher at Deerfield Academy, a preparatory school. Non-fans of him include his students, colleagues and principals, who find his pomposity and rigor irritating him. During the Christmas holidays of 1970, with no family and nowhere to go, Paul stays at school to take care of students who can’t go home. A few days later, only one student remains: 15-year-old Angus, prone to accidents, a good student undermined by bad behavior that always threatens to expel him. Paul and Angus are joined by Deerfield’s head cook, Mary, an African American woman who cares for disadvantaged children and whose son was recently lost in Vietnam. These three very different castaways form a Christmas family, share hilarious misadventures during two very snowy weeks in New England, and realize that neither of them has their own past.

Miramax’s Block made the film and canceled the rights before it was made. It’s the same thing the company did A man’s anger, sir, is everything. Y I’m Tony. Then they sell to the retailer at risk.

Deadline put the film on the TIFF hot list and revealed the project for the first time before Payne was set for filming. At the time, he said, “I came across an example of David Hemmingson’s writing for a driver in high school. I called him, told him the idea and he was quick to accept it. After working with Paolo next toI wanted to work with him again and this role is made for him. I still think like then. … I hate to use the term “the best actor of his generation” because there are so many wonderful actors, but when I worked with him on Sideways I was blown away by the variety of him. As a director, you want actors who know how to make even the wrong dialogue work, and he can. He can do anything. I think it’s only a matter of time before he gets an Oscar. “

Become a pillar of support for the unlikely three.

“The story focuses on one guy in particular, a really smart 15-year-old boy and a nice guy,” Payne said. “Her widowed mother has just married a rich man and she wants to use this vacation as a honeymoon. At the last minute, the boy breaks down and tells him that he has to stay in school. selected this year [to watch the stranded students] There’s Paul Giamatti, this stupid wall of history that doesn’t like the history professor. Eventually, the other three or four kids find another place to go and it becomes a two-way but actually mind blowing because of the cook being left behind and the three of them having an adventure on a very snowy Christmas. New England.”