For more than two decades, Paul Greengrass has built a career out of films in which institutions crack, panic spreads, and ordinary people are pulled into history whether they asked for it or not. That has been true of “United 93,” “Captain Phillips,” and the hard-charging paranoia of “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.” He stays in that terrain with the historical drama “The Uprising,” which Focus Features has now set for a domestic theatrical release on September 11, 2026.
Focus describes the film as the untold true story of a ferocious rebellion against the tyranny of King Richard II, with Andrew Garfield playing the legendary leader of an uprising that forms an army of commoners to face the King’s might in a fight for justice and survival as war burns across England. Garfield leads a cast that also includes Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, and Katherine Waterston.
Greengrass wrote and directed the picture, which only makes the fit feel tighter. He has long been drawn to stories shaped by pressure, disorder, and political violence, so a film about revolt and survival in fourteenth-century England does not read like some abrupt genre pivot so much as another variation on themes that have run through his work for years. Jason Blum is producing through Blumhouse, alongside Gregory Goodman, Joanna Kaye, Greengrass, Lars Sylvest, and Joe Neurauter.
The date also puts the film right on the edge of the fall-festival corridor. The 2026 Venice International Film Festival runs September 2 through September 12, the 53rd Telluride Film Festival runs September 3 through September 7, and TIFF begins September 10. With “The Uprising” opening nationwide on September 11, Toronto would be an especially tight spot for a first launch, while Venice or Telluride look like the cleaner options if Focus wants a festival premiere before release. Nothing has been announced there yet, but the calendar certainly invites that read.
Focus also framed the film as part of a broad 2026 slate that includes Robert Eggers’ “Werwulf,” Curry Barker’s “Obsession,” Georgia Oakley’s “Sense and Sensibility,” Anthony Maras’ “Pressure,” and Hayley Kiyoko’s “Girls Like Girls,” along with documentaries from Daniel Roher and Morgan Neville. But “The Uprising” looks like one of the studio’s clearest early-fall prestige plays—a historical revolt drama from a filmmaker who has spent most of his career turning upheaval into propulsion. It opens September 11, 2026.
