EXCLUSIVE: Corey Hawkins and Kelvin Harrision Jr. are in talks to join the cast of the Focus Features and Amblin Entertainment feature adaptation of Death of a Salesman. Jeffrey Wright and Octavia Spencer are set to star. Chinonye Chukwu will direct and co-adapt with Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner Arthur Miller’s play.
Focus and Amblin declined to comment.
The 1949 Pulitzer Prize winning two-act play first premiered on Broadway in February 1949 and ran for 742 performances. The play follows aging traveling salesman Willy Loman who tries to fix his life with the family he always put down as he put work first. The play, which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play, focuses on themes of infidelity, truth and the American Dream. There have been myriad adaptations for TV with Dustin Hoffman, Warren Mitchell, Brian Dennehy playing Willy Loman. The 1951 feature adaptation starred Frederic March as Willy and was nominated for five Academy Awards.
Producers are Cindy Tolan, Kristie Macosko Krieger via Amblin Entertainment and Spencer via Orit Entertainment. Tony Kushner will also serve as a producer.
Hawkins has been very busy as of late as he is currently shooting Nightwatching opposite Mila Kunis. Next up for Hawkins, he can be seen in the Amazon MGM Studios thriller Crime 101, which also stars Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Barry Keoghan, and in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, opposite Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Rob Pattinson, Anne Hathawa, and Lupita Nyong’o. He also stars opposite Willem Dafoe in Nadia Latif’s adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel The Man in My Basement, which premiered at TIFF 2025. He is repped by WME.
Harrison Jr. was most recently seen in the Searchlight musical O’Dessa opposite Sadie Sink. Next up he can be seen in Alph Gang as well as The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping. He is repped by WME and Anonymous Content.