---
name: "Sam Levinson"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/sam-levinson"
roles: ["Producer","Director"]
born: "8 January 1985"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 4
average_fi1m_score: 69
average_as: "producer"
average_over: 3
updated: "2026-09-17T18:44:34.532262+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Sam Levinson

Producer and director. Born 8 January 1985 in USA.

## Details

- **Work:** Producer, Director
- **Born:** 8 January 1985, USA
- **Active:** 2019–present
- **Also known as:** Samuel Levinson, 샘 레빈슨, 萨姆·莱文森
- **Titles on Fi1m:** 4: 1 directing, 3 producing
- **Average Fi1m score:** 69, as producer, over 3 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 2010s 65 (1), 2020s 69 (3)
- **Fi1m against the critics:** 69 to 68 across 3 titles
- **Score spread:** 0 at 80+, 2 at 60–79, 1 under 60
- **Genres:** Horror 2, Comedy 1, Drama 1
- **Screen time:** 3 hours of reviewed films
- **Box office:** $32m across 2 films with figures
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Levinson, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7407789, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0506094/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/96172

## Streaming the US now

- **HBO Max:** [*Euphoria*](https://film.one/tv/euphoria.md) (65)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Sam Levinson

> Sam Levinson makes television that looks like nothing else on it, and then explains it to you in voiceover. The pictures, shot with Marcell Rév, are the real thing; the writing keeps mistaking shock for insight, and outside *Euphoria* the reputation rests on not much.

Rue Bennett tells us in the first minutes of *Euphoria* that she has no intention of staying clean, in a voice so flat you could set a glass on it. Then Sam Levinson does the thing he always does. Every episode opens with Rue reading us one character's biography, childhood to present, so that by the time they speak we already know what they mean; then the party, the dozens of bodies, the phone screens. He wants the picture that needs no explaining and the explanation, and he wants them at the same time.

He started as an actor in his father's films and took his first writing credit on *Operation: Endgame* (2010). *Another Happy Day* (2011), which he wrote and directed, went to Sundance, as did *Assassination Nation* (2018), about social media, rage and teenage girls under attack; between them he wrote *The Wizard of Lies* (2017). Then came *Euphoria*, from 16 June 2019, three seasons of eight episodes each, finishing in 2026, and around it *Malcolm & Marie* (2021), a two-hander made in the pandemic, and *The Idol* (2023). The reviews for those last two were unkind, and the charge each time was the same: characters written too thinly to carry what was being done to them. We have not reviewed them. We will say the charge is one we recognise.

What works is the look and the acting, and the two are connected. Marcell Rév has shot four projects with him, and in the later seasons of *Euphoria* they moved to wider frames and real locations, so that a show which began in coloured light and bedrooms started to look like a place. Levinson has said that "the best, most honest performances are when an actor feels free and safe", and whatever he does on set, it shows. Zendaya's Rue is the real thing, and her opening minutes unsettled us more than any of the nudity that follows, because Zendaya plays a girl who has already decided and is only telling us as a courtesy. The show does not soften what addiction does to her or to the people around her, and that is its one unarguable virtue.

What does not work is the writing's need to prove itself. The locker-room nudity, the phone screens and the bodies at the party are there to show the series is unflinching, and it has shown it by the third episode and keeps showing it for five more. Kat Hernandez gets the strand that most wants credit for honesty and least earns it; Cassie Howard is written as the girl things happen to, which is the criticism most often made of Levinson's women and, on the evidence of the first season, a fair one. Eight editors are credited, and some episodes drift while others race. Levinson does not trust a face to do the work; he reads us the notes.

*Euphoria* is over. The next thing he makes will have to stand without Rue to explain it, and we are curious, and not confident.

## Biography

Sam Levinson is an American screenwriter, director and producer. Born on 8 January 1985, he is the son of director Barry Levinson. He received his first writing credit on the 2010 film *Operation: Endgame* and made his directorial debut with *Another Happy Day* (2011), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He also wrote for his father's 2017 television film *The Wizard of Lies*.

Levinson created, wrote and directed the HBO series *Euphoria* (2019), adapted from an Israeli series of the same name. The series ran for three seasons and concluded in 2026. His other feature films as writer and director include *Assassination Nation* (2018) and *Malcolm & Marie* (2021). He created the 2023 HBO series *The Idol*.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (4)

### Directed (1)

- *Euphoria* (2019), Fi1m 65, Executive Producer, Creator, Director, Writer, Teleplay — [page](https://film.one/tv/euphoria.md)

### Produced (3) — the average rests on these

- *MaXXXine* (2024), Fi1m 58, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/maxxxine.md)
- *Irma Vep* (2022), Fi1m 74, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/tv/irma-vep-2022.md)
- *Pearl* (2022), Fi1m 76, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/film/pearl.md)

## Complete filmography (24)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Place to Be* (2026), Executive Producer
- *Euphoria: A Look Back* (2026), Director
- *Megalopolis* (2024), Thanks — Fi1m 54, [page](https://film.one/film/megalopolis.md)
- *MaXXXine* (2024), Executive Producer — Fi1m 58, [page](https://film.one/film/maxxxine.md)
- *The Idol* (2023), series, Executive Producer, Director, Teleplay, Story, Original Music Composer, Creator
- *The Weeknd - Double Fantasy* (2023), Director
- *Pearl* (2022), Executive Producer — Fi1m 76, [page](https://film.one/film/pearl.md)
- *Breaking* (2022), Executive Producer
- *Irma Vep* (2022), series, Executive Producer — Fi1m 74, [page](https://film.one/tv/irma-vep-2022.md)
- *X* (2022), Executive Producer
- *Deep Water* (2022), Screenplay
- *Malcolm & Marie* (2021), Director, Writer, Producer
- *Pieces of a Woman* (2020), Executive Producer
- *Bombshell* (2019), Thanks
- *Euphoria* (2019), series, Director, Writer, Executive Producer, Teleplay, Creator — Fi1m 65, [page](https://film.one/tv/euphoria.md)
- *Assassination Nation* (2018), Director, Writer
- *The Wizard of Lies* (2017), Screenplay
- *Another Happy Day* (2011), Director, Screenplay
- *Operation: Endgame* (2010), Writer
- *Stoic* (2009), as Peter Thompson
- *What Just Happened* (2008), as Carl
- *Bandits* (2001), as Billy Saunders
- *Toys* (1992), as War Room Player
- *Hell Naw*, Producer

## Gallery

- ![Joe Russo, Sam Levinson, Bill Skarsgård, Suki Waterhouse and Hari Nef speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Assassination Nation", at the](https://film.one/media/person/340454/gallery-00e2690b1ecf.jpg) Joe Russo, Sam Levinson, Bill Skarsgård, Suki Waterhouse and Hari Nef speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Assassination Nation", at the — Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a8/Joe_Russo%2C_Sam_Levinson%2C_Bill_Skarsgard%2C_Suki_Waterhouse_%26_Hari_Nef_%2843573030882%29.jpg/1280px-Joe_Russo%2C_Sam_Levinson%2C_Bill_Skarsgard%2C_Suki_Waterhouse_%26_Hari_Nef_%2843573030882%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Sam Levinson speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Assassination Nation", at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Pl](https://film.one/media/person/340454/gallery-267e0908340b.jpg) Sam Levinson speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Assassination Nation", at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Pl — Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/06/Sam_Levinson_%2843573073172%29.jpg/1280px-Sam_Levinson_%2843573073172%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Sam Levinson speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Assassination Nation", at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Pl](https://film.one/media/person/340454/gallery-c374f2fe3ed6.jpg) Sam Levinson speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con International, for "Assassination Nation", at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California. Pl — Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Sam_Levinson_%2843620751841%29.jpg/1280px-Sam_Levinson_%2843620751841%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Sam Levinson at The Idol premiere in Cannes Film Festival 2023](https://film.one/media/person/340454/gallery-00ed5ca105b4.png) Sam Levinson at The Idol premiere in Cannes Film Festival 2023 — Canal22, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Sam_Levinson_Cannes_2023.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled)
- ![Sam Levinson](https://film.one/media/person/340454/gallery-c4518acf9c40.jpg) Sam Levinson — Image via TMDB
- ![Sam Levinson](https://film.one/media/person/340454/gallery-7952f94dfb51.jpg) Sam Levinson — Image via TMDB
- ![Sam Levinson](https://film.one/media/person/340454/gallery-faa3d73b77ee.jpg) Sam Levinson — Image via TMDB
- ![Sam Levinson](https://film.one/media/person/340454/gallery-90c08eb3e77a.jpg) Sam Levinson — Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Sam_Levinson_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg/1280px-Sam_Levinson_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/sam-levinson