Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2013: #27. David Michod’s The Rover

Published on January 14, 2013

The Rover

Director/Writer: David Michôd
Producer(s): David Linde and Liz Watts
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Guy Pearce, Scoot McNairy

His four-star, stellar criminal underworld saga Animal Kingdom officially put first-time helmer David Michod on the map. His sophomore film was a top sales title in Cannes 2012, and the pic contains an impressive trio of three so far (further casting announcements should be made shortly) with Scoot McNairy easily enjoying his time in the spotlight.

Gist: The Rover is set in the Australian desert in a dangerous and dysfunctional near future. Eric (Guy Pearce) has left everything and every semblance of human kindness behind him. When his last possession, his car, is stolen by a gang of dangerous criminals, Eric sets off to track them down and is forced along the way to enlist the help of Reynolds (Robert Pattinson), the naive member of the gang left behind in the bloody chaos of the gang’s most recent escape.

Release Date: Production begins this month in Australia, so this means programmers from Telluride, Venice, Toronto, NYFF all have wishes of nabbing a world premiere. Surprisingly, no U.S. distributor has sunk their fangs into this.

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).