"BURN AFTER READING"

NEW YORK, March 3rd, 2008 – Focus Features today announced that it will open Burn After Reading, the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen, Academy Award-winning directors of this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner No Country for Old Men, domestically nationwide on Friday, September 12th.

Joel and Ethan Coen are writers, producers, and directors of Focus Features and Working Title Films’ Burn After Reading. The film stars Academy Award winner George Clooney, two-time Academy Award nominee John Malkovich, Academy Award winner Frances McDormand, Academy Award nominee Brad Pitt, and Academy Award winner Tilda Swinton. Working Title co-chairs Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are executive-producing Burn After Reading with Robert Graf, who has worked on the Coens’ last five features in various producing capacities.

In the dark spy-comedy, Mr. Malkovich plays an ousted CIA official whose memoir accidentally falls into the hands of two unwise D.C. gym employees intent on exploiting their find. Ms. Swinton, this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Michael Clayton, plays the wife of Mr. Malkovich’s character. Burn After Reading also stars Richard Jenkins, who previously starred for the Coens in The Man Who Wasn’t There.

The director of photography on Burn After Reading is Academy Award nominee Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men). BAFTA Award nominee Mary Zophres is the costume designer, marking her eighth consecutive feature with the Coens. Jess Gonchor, production designer on No Country for Old Men, encores in that capacity.

Focus Features (http://www.focusfeatures.com/) is a motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company committed to bringing moviegoers the most original stories from the world’s most innovative filmmakers.

In addition to Burn After Reading, current and upcoming Focus Features releases include Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes, which world-premiered as the Opening-Night film of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; Bharat Nalluri’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams; Andrew Fleming’s irreverent comedy Hamlet 2, starring Steve Coogan; Shane Acker’s animated fantasy epic 9, starring Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly; Henry Selick’s stop-motion animated feature Coraline, starring Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher; Cary Fukunaga’s immigrant thriller Sin Nombre; writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s new film, tentatively titled The Limits of Control, starring Isaach De Bankolé; Gus Van Sant’s Milk, starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk; and a contemporary comedy to be directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes.