Festival Predictions

2013 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman’s Lovelace

Published on November 20, 2012

Longtime filmmaker pairing of Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have had their share of premieres at the fest all the way back to Where Are We? (Sundance ’91), The Celluloid Closet (Sundance ’95), award-winning Paragraph 175 (Sundance ’00) and more recently, broke from docs with Howl (Sundance ’10). They would naturally be on pace to deliver their second fictional, fact-based biopic starring Amanda Seyfried in the skin of Linda Lovelace. All-star cast for Lovelace includes: Peter Sarsgaard, Juno Temple, Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Chris Noth, Adam Brody, Hank Azaria, Wes Bentley, James Franco, Eric Roberts, Chloë Sevigny and Bobby Cannavale.

Gist: Written by Andy Bellin, this centers around Lovelace’s life as the star of the first porn movie with a plot, 1972’s “Deep Throat,” and pornographer husband, Chuck Traynor, played by Peter Sarsgaard. James Franco plays a young Hugh Hefner.

Production Co./Producers: Eclectic Pictures’ Heidi Jo Markel, Untitled Entertainment’s Laura Rister and Jason Weinberg, Animus Films’ Jim Young

Prediction: Premieres section

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available

Related Topics:2013 Sundance Film Festival, Jeffrey Friedman, Lovelace, Rob Epstein

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).