Black Bear has hired Courtney L. Cunniff as senior vice president of film. Cunniff comes to Black Bear from eOne and Hasbro, where she served as vice president of production and development & acquisitions for film titles under both of the company’s banners. Black Bear’s credits include “The Imitation Game,” “I Care A Lot” and “Nyad,” which recently earned Oscar nominations for Annette Bening and Jodie Foster.
In her new role, Cunniff will focus on the development, packaging and production of the company’s 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.
In Cunniff’s previous job at eOne and Hasbro, she 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 and “The Creator” starring John David Washington. She also served as a producer on Nicolas Pesce’s “Visitation” starring Olivia Cooke. She was previously an executive at Focus Features, where she worked on such films as “Downton Abbey” and “Promising Young Woman.”
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Cunniff will work out of Black Bear’s Los Angeles office and report to CEO Teddy Schwarzman and Michael Heimler, the company’s president of production and operations.
Black Bear’s upcoming films include the Sydney Sweeney horror film, “Immaculate”; Guy Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” starring Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson and Henry Golding; and Greg Kwedar’s “Sing Sing,” starring Colman Domingo. The company also debuted its first television series last month, “Monsieur Spade,” from creators Scott Frank and Tom Fontana and starring Clive Owen.
