Don Handfield

Don Handfield is an American writer, director and producer whose film work includes *Touchback*, a football drama he wrote and directed. Released in 2012, it stars Brian Presley as Scott Murphy, a former high school quarterback whose injury ended his hopes of playing college football. After an accident, Scott gets a chance to revisit the championship game that changed his life. Kurt Russell plays his coach, and Melanie Lynskey plays his wife. The story turns on a choice specific to Scott: whether changing the play that injured him would be worth losing the life and family he came to know.

Handfield co-created the television series *Knightfall* with Richard Rayner and served as an executive producer. Premiering on History in 2017, the series follows the Knights Templar after the loss of Acre, a crucial Crusader stronghold. Tom Cullen plays Landry du Lauzon, a Templar whose search for the Holy Grail entangles him with the French monarchy and conflicts within his order. *Knightfall* ran for two seasons. Its second season brought in Mark Hamill as Talus, a veteran Templar charged with training recruits. The series gave Handfield a setting far removed from *Touchback*’s contemporary, small-town football story.

As a producer, Handfield worked on *The Founder*, the 2016 film starring Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc. Directed by John Lee Hancock from a screenplay by Robert Siegel, it traces Kroc’s involvement with the McDonald brothers and his expansion of their restaurant concept into a franchise business. Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch play Dick and Mac McDonald. The film’s conflict centers on the difference between the brothers’ carefully run restaurant and Kroc’s ambitions for the name. Handfield’s credit is as a producer, not the film’s writer or director.

Handfield also produced *Kill the Messenger*, the 2014 drama starring Jeremy Renner as journalist Gary Webb. Directed by Michael Cuesta, it depicts Webb’s reporting on connections between cocaine trafficking and the Contra war in Nicaragua, as well as the scrutiny that followed publication of his work. Together, these credits show the distinct roles Handfield has held: writer-director on *Touchback*, co-creator and executive producer on *Knightfall*, and film producer on *The Founder* and *Kill the Messenger*. Each project is identifiable by its own subject, from Scott Murphy’s second chance at a football game to Landry’s Templar quest, Kroc’s franchising campaign and Webb’s investigation. Those named credits, rather than a single genre, define his screen career.