Magnolia Picks Up ‘Experimenter’ Starring Peter Saarsgard

Magnolia Picks Up Experimenter Starring Peter Saarsgard
Peter Saarsgard stars in ‘Experimenter’ (Photo © 2014 Jason Robinette)

Magnolia Pictures has acquired Experimenter from writer/director Michael Almereyda and will be releasing the film in North America later this year. The dramatic film had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and features a cast that includes Peter Saarsgard, Winona Ryder, Jim Gaffigan, Taryn Manning, Anton Yelchin, Kellan Lutz, John Leguizamo, Anthony Edwards, Josh Hamilton, Lori Singer, Vondie Curtis-Hall and Dennis Haysbert.

Experimenter is an absolutely fascinating film,” stated Magnolia President Eamonn Bowles, commenting on the pick up. “Michael Almereyda again does a brilliant, imaginative job in illuminating a complex subject.”

The Plot:

In 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the “obedience experiments” at Yale University. The experiments observed the responses of ordinary people asked to send harmful electrical shocks to a stranger. Despite pleadings from the person they were shocking, 65 percent of subjects obeyed commands from a lab-coated authority figure to deliver potentially fatal currents. With Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram’s Kafkaesque results hit a nerve, and he was accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster. Experimenter invites us inside Milgram’s whirring mind, beginning with his obedience research and wending a path to uncover how inner obsessions and the times in which he lived shaped a parade of human behavior inquiries.


-By Rebecca Murray

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