Top 100 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2018: #74. Dan Fogelman’s Life Itself

Life Itself

With all the intersecting ensemble threads promised for his sophomore film, hopefully Dan Fogelman will better manage the puzzles pieces as we weren’t entirely convinced he was able to fit it all in 2015’s Danny Collins where we mentioned that his return “to this hypertrophic mode of drama wherein potentially insurmountable life tragedies get mushed together to equal one big positive, though kernels of authentic emotions sometimes shine through the contrivances.” Returning to television gigs between features with Pitch and This Is Us, Fogelman’s Life Itself went into production at the beginning of 2017 “from the streets of New York to the Spanish countryside and back” with a rom com that spans the decades. It’s when Amazon Studios outbid the other distributors with a 10M price tag where we officially took notice.

Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Samuel L. Jackson, Olivia Cooke, Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, Mandy Patinkin, Caitlin Carmichael and Laia Costa take part in a multi-generational love story, weaving together a number of characters whose lives intersect over the course of decades from the streets of New York to the Spanish countryside and back. This might work.

Release Date/Prediction: Amazon Studios will want to line this up for the fall film festival line-up.