Sam Pressman

Source: Pressman Film

Sam Pressman

EXCLUSIVE: Pressman Film CEO Sam Pressman is talking to potential partners at AFM on a development slate of library titles including early-career works from Brian De Palma and Joan Tewkesbury.

The English-language slate expands on an idea hatched in Cannes 2021 to mine the Pressman Film vault and make local-language remakes of the 1992 Abel Ferrara crime drama Bad Lieutenant, which Pressman’s late father Ed Pressman produced.

Sam Pressman was in Japan over the summer producing the first project to emerge from that vision, the Japanese- and English-language Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, which Takashi Miike directs and Neon International continues to sell here this week.

The new roster of titles includes The Untouchables and Carrie director De Palma’s 1972 slasher horror Sisters which starred Margot Kidder; the 1979 road trip comedy Old Boyfriends from Tewkesbury, who directed TV series Northern Exposure and Chicago Hope and wrote Nashville for Robert Altman; and Lewis Jackson’s 1980 horror Christmas Evil.

Pressman is also keen to line up several of the company’s literary properties that his father liked. French novella Girl On A Motorcycle was adapted into a 1968 feature by Jack Cardiff starring Marianne Faithfull, who died in January; while David McClintick’s book Indecent Exposure: A True Story Of Hollywood And Wall Street chronicled a scandal at Columbia Pictures in the 1970s.

“My father just loved both of those as well as The Monkey Wrench Gang [Edward Abbey’s 1975 novel about environmental activists] Pressman said. “Taking his philosophy of persistence and never giving up, we’re actually gaining traction on these projects.”

Pressman will speak on tomorrow’s [November 12] AFM Sessions panel Finance I – From Packaging to Payback: Investment, Incentives & International Markets.

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