Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated American Indie Films of 2018: #62. Joe Wright’s Stoner

Published on January 16, 2018

Stoner

After more weighty studio projects in Pan (2015) and The Darkest Hour (2017), Joe Wright moves more into prestige medium sized independent pic with Stoner – a book to film adaptation backed by Blumhouse. Coined as the Greatest American Novel You’ve Never Heard Of by the NYTimes, optioned in 2011 and packaged late last year, filming began in September with Casey Affleck and then Tommy Lee Jones being added to the period item.

Written by Andrew Bovell and based on the novel of the same name by John Williams, this follows the life of William Stoner (Affleck), a dirt-poor farmer turned academic, who emerges as an unlikely existential hero while making his way through the first half of the 20th Century.

Release Date/Prediction: Seeing that this doesn’t have a studio attached, we figure some news will drop in Cannes for sales, and not unlike some of his previous items, this has Telluride-Venice-TIFF written all over it.

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).