Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Michael Mayer’s The Seagull

Published on November 16, 2017

We were quite surprised that The Seagull didn’t drop sometime in 2017, after all, production did take place in 2015. The good news is that buyers got ample time to familiarize with the project beforehand, and Sony Picture Classics made the surprise, non TIFF-related pick-up this past October. The distrib picked up Call Me by Your Name prior to showing at Sundance, so perhaps Michael Mayer will have the same festival fate. A Home at the End of the World (2004) and Flicka (2006) are in the distant past, with the stage (Spring Awakening, American Idiot and Hedwig And The Angry Inch) taking up most of his creative output since. Annette Bening, Saoirse Ronan, Corey Stoll, Elisabeth Moss, Brian Dennehy and Mare Winningham star.

Gist: This centers on the romantic and artistic clashes between fading actress Irina Arkadina; fresh-faced ingénue Nina Zarechnaya; famous writer Boris Trigorin, Irina’s lover; and failing playwright Konstantin Treplyov, Irina’s son who is in love with Nina. All four come up against one another while visiting a country estate owned by Irina’s brother.

Production Co./Producers: Tom Hulce (A Home at the End of the World), Robert Salerno (Nocturnal Animals), Leslie Urdang (The Family Fang).

Prediction: Ideally it would land the same festival unveiling as Guadagnino’s film. Perhaps Premieres category stretched out until the fall.

U.S. Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics.

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).