Festival Predictions

2017 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Published on November 29, 2016

While his brother (John Michael McDonagh) appears to enjoy the Park City backdrop (The Guard, Calvary) so does this Londoner / short film Oscar winner in Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in 2006. Martin McDonagh premiered his directorial debut In Bruges at Sundance back in 2008 and made the TIFF preemed Seven Psychopaths (2012) his sophomore project. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri lensed this past April on location in North Carolina with McDonagh reuniting with Harrelson and Rockwell with Peter Dinklage, Abbie Cornish, Frances McDormand, Lucas Hedges, Kerry Condon, John Hawkes and Caleb Landry Jones.

Gist: After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter’s murder case, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), the town’s revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), an immature mother’s boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing’s law enforcement is only exacerbated.

Production Co./Producers: Graham Broadbent and Peter Czernin (The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), Martin McDonagh.

Prediction: Premieres section with a Berlin Film Fest showing.

U.S. Distributor: Fox Searchlight.

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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).