Focus Features

Under Peter Kujawski, Focus has spent the last couple of years proving its arthouse instincts can still travel: Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu" became a genuine box-office hit for a grim, subtitled-adjacent period horror film, and "Conclave" turned a talky papal-election drama into a Best Picture contender and crossover conversation piece. That's the Focus playbook — prestige directors given real final cut, released theatrically instead of dumped to streaming, and marketed on craft rather than stars.

Our take is that Focus remains the best argument against the theory that mid-budget adult films are dead, precisely because its parent, Universal, lets it stay small and specific instead of chasing four-quadrant notes. The risk is corporate patience running out if a slate underperforms two years running — so watch whether Universal keeps funding Focus's gambles at the same clip once the Eggers/Edward Berger-style awards wins stop landing on schedule.