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 pickup. “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.
This post was last modified on October 1, 2026 11:57 pm