Sam Pressman

Bio:

Sam Pressman was named CEO, Pressman Film, in January 2023. Since then, he has ushered in an exciting new era of growth for the company through his long-standing relationships with talent, industry insiders and an expansive independent financing network. Pressman Film was founded by Sam’s late father Edward R. Pressman, who produced such iconic films as Badlands, Conan the Barbarian, American Psycho and Wall Street.  The Los Angeles-based production company produced four films in 2025, including Takashi Miike's Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo and Gus Van Sant’s hostage thriller Dead Man's Wire starring Bill Skarsgard, Coleman Domingo and Al Pacino. Pressman Film currently has over a dozen new films in active development, including Luca Guadagnino's upcoming adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, Josephine Decker’s Chasing Summer (Iliza Schlessinger, Lola Tung, Megan Mullally), Daniel Cockburn’s The Eden Express (Jonah Hauer-King, David Duchovny) and Jenny Suen's Peaches (Sophie Thatcher, Havana Rose Liu).   

Under Sam’s leadership, Pressman Film is also pushing into TV and stage, expanding operations internationally with new creative execs, and the company recently secured $2 million in an unprecedented crowd-equity development raise on Republic.com that allows big screen fans a chance to invest in its upcoming slate—a first for Hollywood.  Pressman Film recently announced its teaming with Tomorrow Studios on a new limited TV series at Apple about the Claus von Bülow trial from Jack Thorne (Adolescence) and unveiled its first slate of TV projects with writers, directors, and producers behind such series as The Wire, Bosch and Tehran. 

The company is also incorporating VR, AI, blockchain and other cutting-edge technology into its everyday business models and the company has recently produced several projects that showcase new tech. Pressman Film recently partnered with Asteria to bring John Fitzgerald’s critically acclaimed AI installation Beyond The Vivid Unknown to last year’s Immersive Competition at Cannes and a year earlier, alongside EP Terrence Malick, produced VR experience Evolver,  which features the voice of Cate Blanchett and was part of the inaugural Cannes Immersive Competition. 
Pressman Film also brought the VR experience Dark Rooms to the Venice’s Immersive Competition last summer and will  their groundbreaking film About a Hero will be released by Utopia’s Circle Collective label in the US, which was created through a collaboration between director Piotr Winiewicz and Kaspar, an LLM trained the work of Werner Herzog (with his permission.)  

Before assuming the role of CEO, Sam worked with his father on such films as Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Barry Levinson’s Paterno, Keith Maitland's Dear Mr. Brody, Matt Brown's The Man Who Knew Infinity, Mary Harron’s Daliland and Rupert Sander’s reboot of The Crow. With a deep reverence for his father’s contributions to independent cinema and a firm commitment to carrying on the Pressman penchant for storytelling, Sam approaches his role as producer with a sense of humility and a fierce determination to create films that honor the company’s legacy. Sam graduated from Stanford University, where he majored in Film & Media Studies and was the president of the Stanford Film Society and head of the Advanced Film Workshop.