Kennedy Secures ANZ Distribution with Screen Inc

The story cinema forgot has found its home.

Lonely Hill Films is proud to announce that Kennedy, the original screenplay by Darren K. Hawkins and Lauren Hamilton Neill, has signed with Screen Inc for Australian and New Zealand distribution, backed by founder Dov Kormits and industry veteran Les Morris.

It is the first meaningful step toward bringing Bridget Kennedy to the screen she has always deserved.

For 119 years, Australian cinema has told the same story. Nine feature films. Three miniseries. Two TV movies. Every single one of them placed Ned Kelly at the centre. Every single one of them failed to travel beyond our shores.

Kennedy is something else entirely.

It is the story of Sergeant Michael Kennedy's widow, an Irish immigrant woman who lost her husband, her unborn child, and her financial security to a myth that the nation then chose to celebrate. Rather than disappear into grief, Bridget Kennedy spent years fighting back. She challenged the establishment. She changed the law. And she has never, in 119 years of cinema, been given a single frame of screen time.

That ends here.

The partnership with Screen Inc, one of Australia's most respected independent distribution companies, anchors the project in the ANZ market with the expertise and conviction this story demands. Dov Kormits, whose work through Screen Inc and FilmInk has shaped independent Australian cinema for decades, brings both institutional knowledge and genuine passion for films that matter. Alongside Les Morris, the team represents exactly the kind of home Kennedy needs as it moves into its next phase of development.

"Australia has been telling the Kelly story for 119 years," says writer-director Darren K. Hawkins. "What it has never done is reckon with what that mythology cost the people it erased. Bridget Kennedy is that reckoning. And she deserves to be seen."

Kennedy is currently in active development, with the international distribution conversation underway. The screenplay, Draft V8, based on documented historical events spanning 1868 to 1906, is complete. Panavision is attached. Lead and supporting cast attachments are in progress.

Behind the camera, the creative team is taking shape. Darren K. Hawkins directs from his own screenplay, co-written with actor and writer Lauren Hamilton Neill. Cinematographer Casimir Dickson ACS joins as director of photography, with executive producers Les Morris and Kieren Devisser rounding out the core team alongside associate producer Mina Hunter.

The argument for this film has always been simple: she requires no prior knowledge of Australia. She requires no sympathy for an outlaw. She requires only the capacity to recognise injustice.

That capacity is universal.

The story has never been told.

Watch this space.

Kennedy is an original screenplay by Darren K. Hawkins & Lauren Hamilton Neill, produced by Lonely Hill Films. ANZ distribution by Screen Inc.