David Brooks

President, Marketing, Focus Features

David Brooks is president of worldwide marketing at Focus Features. He oversees all marketing activities for Focus (www.focusfeatures.com), a singular global company, dedicated to producing, acquiring, financing, selling, and distributing original and daring films from emerging and established filmmakers – films that challenge mainstream moviegoers to embrace and enjoy voices and visions from around the world. The company’s flexible and nuanced approach to distribution allows it to support a wide range of films. The company operates as Focus Features domestically, and as Focus Features International overseas.



Mr. Brooks, based in Focus Features’ Universal City offices, joined the company in the fall of 2002. Since that time, he has overseen all aspects of strategizing and fulfilling the company’s motion picture release plans and awards season campaigns.



Focus’ top-grossing films to date are Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which grossed over $180 million worldwide and won 3 Academy Awards, including Best Director; Henry Selick’s groundbreaking 3D stop-motion animated feature Coraline; Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading; and two more Academy Award winners, Joe Wright’s Atonement and Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. The company’s other Academy Award-winning films include Gus Van Sant’s Milk, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries.



Mr. Brooks has also overseen all aspects of campaigns for such acclaimed Focus releases as Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right; Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man; Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre and Jane Eyre; Shane Acker’s animated fantasy epic 9; David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises; Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges; Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice and Hanna; Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams; Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven; and François Ozon’s Swimming Pool, the top specialized hit of the summer of 2003.



Mr. Brooks joined Focus after 12 years at Miramax Films, where he was most recently executive vice president and co-head of marketing. During his tenure, he oversaw or had input into campaigns for over 250 feature films. For a decade, he was a key architect of the company’s Academy Awards campaigns. Among the features that he worked on over the years were Shakespeare in Love, Life is Beautiful, Good Will Hunting, Pulp Fiction, The Piano, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Chocolat, and Serendipity.



He joined Miramax Films direct from New York University graduate school. Initially, he worked in the company’s advertising division before establishing himself in the marketing department.