Edward R. PressmanMovies were always “a little taboo, a little transmission”, as his son Sam Pressman tells it, but he always struggled to get them done, especially if it involved to seek the emerging filmmakers behind them and “never give them up.”
It was true to date all the way back to the end of the 60s, when Pressman managed to work with a lithany of AUTEURS, including Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog, Brian Depalma, Oliver Stone, Mary Herron, Abel Ferrara and David Byrne, to name just a few, up through Indie that produces the icon’s passing in 2023.
The hope is that the same ethos will remain true under Sam Pressman’s leadership of Pressman FilmWhere the younger Pressman, current CEO of Pressman Film, now maps a course for his father’s company to continue telling stories over the next 50 years. He does so through a mix of original ideas and films that honor his father’s legacy.
When he spoke to IndieWire over Zoom from a hotel room in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was on his way to the fourth movie Pressman movie has in production this year, said Pressman “The most important thing” is that he can really produce films, and they “remain faith to EDS philosophy of telling radical stories and supporting filmmakers that we really believe.”
Back in November, the Pressman movie closed one Collection offer via republic.comA crowdfunding and Cryptocurrency platform that allows individuals to be partial investors in Pressman’s slate and divide in the upside, all use the Avalanche Blockchain network. The company collected $ 2 million in operating costs from 370 investors, just enough cash to allow the Pressman film to continue to do its things. It is an unusual fundraising method, an Ed Pressman would not have known anything about, but Sam said that his father would not have resisted change or innovation.
“It’s almost counterpunt to say,” Oh, we will remain believing in his spirit and be these independent thinkers and find our new path while they only do the same thing he did, “said Pressman.” When he started in the late ’60s, independent movie was a revolutionary technology. The Idea That You Could Make Films Outside of the System Was Still So New. And When I think about the Future of the company and how, in 2069, HopeFully Pressman movie is still Making Motion Pictures, I think we have to be excited by the new Frontier, and we have to look at the new technologies that have already Experience. “
As part of that deal with the Republic, Pressman undertakes to have 50 percent of their slate to be original properties, while the other half will be based on Pressman IP. That is why the company goes back to the well for one of its most iconic films, ”American psycho“With one New film that will be directed by Luca Guadagnino for Lionsgate.
Stop us if you have heard before that Guadagnino has a bunch of projects on his plate And it is unclear which one can actually shoot the next, “American Psycho” among them. But Pressman said that Guadagnino was at the top of his list for directors to customize Bret Easton Elli’s book and that it was a Guadagnino dreamed of making back when he was just a future film critic.
While Casting rumors has swirledPressman said nothing is confirmed yet, but it has not subdued his excitement. “The synergy between Luca and (screenwriter) Scott Z. Burns is evident,” Pressman said. “I think (Patrick) Bateman is an icon for culture, and I think Luca’s vision is to make a movie that is truly blowing, and I hope it is a cultural moment that people debate and discuss.”
In addition to last year’s “The Crow”, the team also just wrapped “Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo,” The next movie from the Japanese champion Takashi Miike that follows in the footsteps of both Ferrara’s “Bad Lieutenant” and Herzog’s Bonkers and cumbersome with the title “Port of Call: New Orleans.” That film is produced by Oscar winner Jeremy Thomas and was also the first film in Pressman’s career that he had an American distributor on board, Neon, before starting the production.
Pressman Film’s first major original title is “Dead Man’s Wire”, the first film from the director Gus van true Since 2018, which premieres this week at the Venice Film Festival. The film is the true story of Tony Kiritsis, a man who took hostage the boss of a loan office with a sawn shotgun with a thread tied from the trigger to the hostage. Pressman called the star Bill Skarsgard’s performance in the movie “Magnetic, Transfixing and Psychotic”, and not unlike the twisted main characters from some of Ed Pressman’s films.
The company also put only one series on Apple from “Teenage writer” author Jack Thorne, and it has a VR project called “Dark Rooms” premiere as part of Venice’s engrossing section At the upcoming festival, just one of several experiments that started with interactive “evolver” from malick and cate blanchett. Pressman said that while he made theater films is their bread and butter, there is more where everything that came from.
“I think we are in a moment where independent film and independent producers actually have an incredible opportunity,” he said. “There are smaller films that are green -lit by streamers and the studios, and yet the global love of film is not depreciation. So for an independent producer, if we make fantastic movies, there is an audience that is hungry for it. To me, the immediate action is, how do we, but we know they know people, and how to build movies that are closer to their movies that are closer to their films that are closer to its relationships that are closer to their relationships, and how to build movies that are closer to their relationships?
