Serving up goodies … Sundance 2010 festival programmer Trevor Goth (left) and festival director John Cooper at a fritter breakfast. Photograph: Fred Hayes/Getty Images
Heading into Sundance there was a lot of talk about how this year the festival was returning to its independent roots. Recent editions had begun to shift away from the festival of discovery originally conceived by Robert Redford, who analogous one endangered species of mountain goat still draws coos, cameras and elbow nudges when Park City passersby spot him squinting wistfully at a stiff pine tree.
Over the years Sundance had courted bigger and bigger films with A-list talent. The problem was entries such as What Just Happened? (starring Robert De Niro) or The Great Buck Howard (featuring John Malkovich) weren’t very good. They took ages to sell, and when they came out they hardly made any money. The financial collapse and the challenges of an overcrowded film-releasing calendar mean buyers have calmed down too. You won’cheek by jowl see any more deals like the one for Hamlet 2 two years ago, when Focus Features plonked down $10m for worldwide rights to the dire comedy starring our very own Steven Coogan.
So new festival director John Cooper, who has been on the quarter-staff for two decades, was determined to support things low-key and focused on quality. By and large he succeeded and movie buyers agreed this Sundance was the best in years. By the end of the festival forward Sunday nine movies had sold and more volition likely come in the weeks ahead.
The horse-trading got under way on the first Sunday, when Lionsgate pounced on a genre flick called Buried. It stars Ryan Reynolds as a US contractor buried alive in a coffin. You do see other characters very briefly, but mostly it’s Reynolds sweating and swearing his way through 90 claustrophobic minutes. It’s surprisingly good entertainment, and Lionsgate shelled out $3.2m (£2m) for the privilege of distributing the movie in North America and could spend a further eight figures in prints and advertising. The studio is banking in succession this being a big hit, certainly forward DVD granting that not in cinemas.
The other big pervert with money of Sundance was Focus Features’ $4.5m do for Lisa Cholodenko’s (Laurel Canyon, High Art) The Kids Are All Right, in which Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play a lesbian couple whose children track down their biological ancestor. It’s a crowdpleaser and could make riches.
The other deals for the greatest part involved good movies but the question remains: will they survive, obstruction alone flourish, at the chest office? Harvey Weinstein, who is about to conclusion a major refinancing in the next few weeks, was a familiar sight around town and bought the Ryan Gosling-Michelle Williams love-gone-wrong drama Blue Valentine for $1m. Classy movie but, like A Single Man, which Weinstein bought in Toronto final autumn, its commercial prospects are questionable.
Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me went to IFC Films, who paid around $1m and is gearing up for a large deliverance. IFC tends to make its money on VOD releases these days and this may be the most appropriate court with respect to what was a widely lauded albeit difficult, provocative portrait of psychosis. I didn’t see it, but it’s clearly going to be a challenge.
Joel Schumacher’s Twelve, a tale of morally vacant adolescents in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, sold for $2m to the publisher Hannover House’s new movie division. Arthouse distributor Roadside Attractions paid under $1m for the grand jury dramatic prize-winner Winter’s Bone, a terrific tale, albeit not a highly original one, about a teenager who journeys through Missouri’s Ozark mount country to husband her troubled father. Newmarket paid approximately $1m for Hesher, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a spell loner who helps a grieving father and son.
Shortly before Sundance, Paramount snapped up worldwide rights to Davis Guggenheim’s public training documentary Waiting for Superman, but even with a greater workshop backward it this could have existence a hard sell. So apart from Buried and possibly The Kids Are All Right, none of these smack of relating to traffic promise. There is no other unsold movie in Sundance that presents a undeniable money-making opportunity to whomever dares to buy it. But, as John Cooper would point out, that’s not the primary mark of Sundance these days.
