As Georgia Oakley’s new Sense and Sensibility heads toward its October 16 U.S. theatrical release, the 2026 adaptation offers audiences a different way into Jane Austen’s familiar story. Starring Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor Dashwood and Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne Dashwood, the film places the sisters’ relationship at the centre of the story. Directed by Oakley and written by Diana Reid, it explores how two very different sisters influence each other while dealing with love, heartbreak, money and the expectations placed on women.
Speaking ahead of the film’s release, Oakley described Elinor and Marianne’s bond as “symbiotic.” Rather than presenting Elinor’s careful nature as the correct way to live and Marianne’s emotional approach as something that must be fixed, the film allows both sisters to learn from each other. Their differences remain important, but neither sister exists simply to teach the other a lesson.
After their father’s death, the Dashwood women lose their family estate and move to a smaller home in Devonshire. Elinor and Marianne then face very different experiences of love and disappointment while trying to support each other. The new film retains Austen’s contrast between “sense” and “sensibility” while giving the sisters’ everyday bond greater emotional weight.
Oakley’s earlier work helps explain why this approach is notable. Her feature debut, Blue Jean, followed a teacher in 1980s Britain who hides her sexuality while dealing with the social pressures of the period. The film earned Oakley a BAFTA nomination and the People’s Choice Award at the Venice Film Festival. Moving from that intimate story to Austen gives the director another opportunity to examine people living within social rules.
Diana Reid brings a strong background in writing about relationships to the project. She is the author of Love & Virtue and Seeing Other People, and her fiction has examined relationships, social expectations and the complicated choices people make around them. Her screenplay adapts Austen’s story for a new film while keeping the emotional and social pressures faced by the Dashwood family at its centre.
The adaptation also arrives more than three decades after the best-known previous big-screen version. Ang Lee’s 1995 Sense and Sensibility starred Emma Thompson as Elinor and Kate Winslet as Marianne. Thompson also wrote the screenplay, which won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The new film returns to the same story while giving its central sisters a different emphasis.
That sisterly feeling was also visible behind the camera. Bodhi Rae Breathnach, who plays the youngest Dashwood sister, Margaret, has described the closeness between Edgar-Jones and Creed-Miles. As an only child, Breathnach said the two actresses felt like the sisters she never had. Her comment offers a glimpse into the connection behind the Dashwood family on screen.
The cast also includes Caitríona Balfe as Mrs. Dashwood, Frank Dillane as John Willoughby, Herbert Nordrum as Colonel Brandon, George MacKay as Edward Ferrars and Fiona Shaw as Mrs. Jennings. Working Title Films and November Pictures produced the film, while Focus Features holds worldwide rights. The film is scheduled to open in the United States on October 16, following its September 25 UK release.
For a story adapted many times, the new Sense and Sensibility is finding its own reason to return. Georgia Oakley’s film does not abandon Austen’s familiar conflict between emotion and restraint. Instead, it places the sisters themselves closer to the centre, showing how Elinor and Marianne can grow through their differences. In this new version, their relationship is not just part of the story, but the connection holding it together.
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