Writer and director Don Handfield recently partnered with two-time Academy Award Nominee Jeremy Renner (The Town, The Hurt Locker) to form The Combine. The company was created to develop commercially viable, high quality content that will attract and support top tier creative talent across the board. The newly formed entity already has several projects set up, both to star Renner: an as-of-yet secret project Handfield will write for Paramount; and a Steve McQueen biopic that is being written by James Gray, directed by Ivan Zacharias, produced by Renner, Handfield and Greg Shapiro (Hurt Locker) and financed by Cross Creek (Black Swan).

Handfield just completed his first feature film Touchback, which he wrote and directed. It was produced by Freedom Films starring Kurt Russell, Christine Lahti, Brian Presley and Melanie Lynskey and is scheduled for a Fall 2011 theatrical release.

He wrote an original romantic comedy, Love Always for DreamWorks, penned the script Genius for Warner Brothers and producer Jerry Weintraub (The Karate Kid, Ocean’s Eleven) and developed and set up several other projects at major studios, most recently The Aztec Warrior, an action comedy set up at Lionsgate/Pantelion set to shoot this Fall with Luis Guzman in the lead.

Handfield received critical acclaim for his short film; My Name is… which qualified for an Academy Award entry after winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival in 2005. His film also earned worldwide honors at festivals in Rome, San Francisco and Houston. That same year, Handfield was a Fellow in the FIND Directors Lab and was featured in Filmmaker Magazine as one of the top 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

Handfield began his Hollywood career as an actor (Deep Impact, The Profiler) before finding his passion behind the camera. He produced television for E! Television, The G Channel and tallied five Telly Awards as a commercial director.

Handfield received his BA in Journalism/TV Broadcast from The Ohio State University with a minor in Theatre Performance and Film.