Suzanne Farwell Makes Her Directing Debut With Otherwise Engaged
Suzanne Farwell is making her feature directing debut with Otherwise Engaged, a romantic comedy she wrote with Gabriel Mizrahi. The Hollywood Reporter reported the project on 11 November 2026.
The film stars Jack Whitehall, Zoë Kravitz, Colin Firth and Halle Berry. Whitehall plays Charlie, a New Yorker who plans to propose to Gabby, played by Kravitz. Those plans run into trouble when his estranged father, Jasper, returns after an early release from prison. Firth plays Jasper, a fallen business tycoon. Berry plays Diana, Gabby's fiercely independent mother.
Farwell is best known to many audiences as a producing partner. She worked alongside Nancy Meyers on Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday, It's Complicated and The Intern. Now she moves into the director's chair, while also producing the film with Susan Cartsonis for Resonate Entertainment. Laura Rister is producing for Esme Grace Pictures.
Production is slated to begin in New York in spring 2027, according to the same report. No release date has been announced.
The film's sales path is already moving. Mister Smith Entertainment launched international sales for the project at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it has brought the film to the American Film Market, the deal-making event held each year in Santa Monica. International sales companies sell a film's rights to distributors in countries outside the United States. CAA Media Finance is handling U.S. rights, meaning the right to release the film in the United States and Canada.
Those rights deals happen long before cameras roll. Festival markets let sales agents show buyers a project's cast, script and producers before a single scene is shot. For a film that will not start shooting until next spring, that early selling is how the money and the release plans begin to take shape.
