Andrew Dominik

Andrew Dominik is an exceptionally talented director-writer-producer whose films deliberately re-invent genres while celebrating them, and exhibiting a pronounced aesthetic sophistication. Right out of the gate, with his Australian feature debut, the crime drama Chopper (2000), starring Eric Bana, Dominik delivered a stylish cult hit that attracted Hollywood’s immediate attention.

Seven years would pass (after abandoning an adaptation of Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me) until Dominik’s sophomore project, the gorgeous and elegant Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, and Mary-Louise Parker.

Premiering at the Venice film festival, the movie was a commercial failure and a critical triumph, leading to two Oscar nominations. Dominik reunited with Pitt for his third film, a fine adaptation of George V. Higgins’ crime fiction novel titled Cogan’s Trade, Killing Them Softly (2012), competing at the Cannes film festival and handled by the Weinstein Company.

For his fourth project, Dominik shifted to documentary filmmaking for a personal look at rocker Nick Cave and his family tragedy, One More Time with Feeling (2016), premiering at the Venice film festival and universally acclaimed. After brilliantly directing two standout episodes of the David Fincher-produced series for Netflix, Mindhunter (2019), Dominik made another documentary on Cave, this time more focused on his creative work, This Much I Know to Be True (2022).

After several aborted projects involving adaptations (including Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man and Cormac McCarthy’s Cities of the Plain), Dominik delivered a much-anticipated version of Joyce Carol Oates’ Marilyn Monroe novel, Blonde (2022), starring Ana de Armas as Marilyn, with Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, and Julianne Nicholson. It premiered in competition at the Venice film festival, distributed by Netflix, and is the only 2022 theatrical release to be rated NC-17.