Focus Features

Focus Features LLC is an American film production and distribution company, owned by Comcast as a division of Universal Pictures, which is itself a division of its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal. Focus Features distributes independent and foreign films in the United States and internationally. In November 2018, The Hollywood Reporter named Focus Features "Distributor of the Year" for its success behind the year's breakout documentary film Won't You Be My Neighbor? and Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman. The studio's most successful film to date is Downton Abbey, which garnered $194.3 million at the worldwide box office. History Focus Features was formed in 2002 by James Schamus and David Linde and formed from the divisional merger of USA Films, Universal Focus and Good Machine, as well as the several assets of the Vivendi-affiliated film studio StudioCanal. USA Films was created by Barry Diller in 1999 when he purchased Interscope Communications, October Films and Gramercy Pictures from Seagram and merged the three labels together. Universal Focus is the specialty film arm of Universal Pictures that was created in 1999 as Universal Classics, which was led by Paul Hardart and Claudia Gray, to replace the October Films label in order to get a group of titles to be distributed by USA Films, focused on the marketing of niche-based acquisitions by Universal Pictures International, Working Title, WT2 Productions, Revolution Films and DNA Films, and eventually rebranded into Universal Focus by 2000. In March 2004, Focus Features revived Rogue Pictures as a genre label, which was once used by October Films in the late 1990s. Rogue Pictures would be led by the same team who led the standard Focus management.