Black Bear, the award-winning studio behind such acclaimed films as NYAD, The Imitation Game, I Care A Lot, and Mudbound, announced today that Courtney L. Cunniff has joined the company’s film team as Senior Vice President of Film. In her role, Cunniff will focus on the development, packaging, and production of Black Bear’s growing slate, which includes such upcoming projects as David Mackenzie’s Relay starring Riz Ahmed, Lily James, and Sam Worthington; Andrew Patterson’s The Rivals of Amziah King starring Matthew McConaughey; and Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams starring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones.
Cunniff comes to Black Bear from eOne/Hasbro, where served as Vice President of production and Development & Acquisitions for film titles under both banners.
There, sourced and assessed development material and oversaw the path to production for a number of feature films such as The Woman King starring Viola Davis, The Creator starring John David Washington, Everything’s Going to Be Great starring Bryan Cranston and Allison Janney and served as a producer on Nicolas Pesce’s Visitation starring Olivia Cooke.
Cunniff was also previously an executive at Focus Features, where worked on key titles including Downton Abbey, The Mustang, The High Note, and Academy Award winner Promising Young Woman.
Cunniff will work out of Black Bear’s Los Angeles office and report to CEO Teddy Schwarzman and President of Production & Operations, Michael Heimler.
Black Bear is coming off a banner year, having produced Netflix drama Nyad, which was nominated for two Academy Awards® including Best Actress for Annette Bening and Best Supporting Actress for Jodie Foster and a WGA nomination for Best
Adapted Screenplay, as well as Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money starring Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Shailene Woodley, Sebastian Stan, America Ferrera, and Pete Davidson. Out next for Black Bear is the Sydney Sweeney horror film, Immaculate, which NEON releases on March 22nd; Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare starring Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, and Henry Golding which hits theaters April 19th via Lionsgate, and Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing, starring Academy Award nominee Colman Domingo, to be released by A24 later this year.
Black Bear also debuted its first television series last month, “Monsieur Spade,” from creators Scott Frank and Tom Fontana and starring Emmy Award® nominee Clive Owen. The series, in which Owen plays iconic private eye Sam Spade last seen on screen in The Maltese Falcon, launched domestically on AMC, AMC+ and Acorn to rave reviews.