Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated American Independent Films of 2019: #35. Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Limelight

Published on January 25, 2019

Limelight

Currently working on television projects as the film is being set up, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon has been attached to direct Limelight since April of last year, and while there has been some movement, no major casting news has been made for what would be his fourth feature film project. Having worked in the indie sphere with 2015’s U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and the Audience Award for U.S. Drama Sundance winner Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (read review) and bigger budgeted The Current War (2017), we’re expecting a non-conventional biopic terrain to be covered here — one that even the former club kids would be into.

Gist: Written by Nick Pileggi & J.J. Sacha about the reign and fall of Peter Gatien, the 1990s king of Gotham nightlife who owned the hip clubs Limelight and The Tunnel.

Release Date/Prediction: Unless production begins shortly, the likelihood of seeing this in 2019 are slim. Amazon Studios might time this with the release of a memoir by Peter Gatien of his club story to be published in the fall of 2020.

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).