American drama film directed by Ron Howard, from a screenplay by Vanessa Taylor, based on the 2016 memoir of the same name by J. D. Vance. The film stars Glenn Close, Amy Adams, Gabriel Basso, Haley Bennett, Freida Pinto, Bo Hopkins, and Owen Asztalos, and follows a Yale law student who must return to his family in Ohio after a family emergency.

After buying the rights to Vance’s book in 2017, Imagine announced Howard as the film’s director. Netflix acquired the distribution rights in January 2019, and much of the cast joined that April. Filming took place from June through August in Georgia and Ohio.

Hillbilly Elegy was released in select theaters in the United States on November 11, 2020, then digitally on Netflix on November 24. The film was negatively received by critics;^[5] it was criticized for its screenplay and storytelling, though the performances of the cast, particularly Adams and Close’s performances, received some praise.