Festival Predictions

2018 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation

Published on November 14, 2017

It’s been a long seven years between features for Sam Levinson. Having started his film career with one of the best films from 2011 in what we called “a bitter, nasty, angry film about family members getting together for a wedding”, it appears that there won’t be many or any similarities between Another Happy Day and Levinson’s sophomore project. Filming on Assassination Nation commenced the past March back in New Orleans, Louisiana, with Suki Waterhouse, Odessa Young, Abra and Hari Nef playing a quartet of angry girls. Levinson was deft when working with an ensemble in his debut film, so if this coined ‘The Crucible’ for millennials is bad ass in terms of character, story development, arrow sharp with the text then it could boil into a wikileaks spillage for young female empowerment. Anika Noni Rose, Bella Thorne, Maude Apatow, Bill Skarsgard, Joel McHale, and Colman Domingo are part of the supporting cast.

Gist: An anonymous hacker begins to terrorize a small town by releasing the most private and personal information of its residents until gossip turns to hysteria and hysteria leads to violence.

Production Co./Producers: Foxtail Entertainment’s Matthew Malek and Anita Gou (To the Bone), Phantom Four David Goyer and Kevin Turen (The Birth of a Nation), Bron Studios’ Aaron L. Gilbert (Beatriz at Dinner).

Prediction: Park City at Midnight.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. TBD (domestic). TBD (international)

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).