Slow Days at Sundance

Temps in single digits, but sale-wise, things are downright frigid at indie fest

By Josh Grossberg Jan 26, 2008 4:02 PMTags

Temperature-wise, single digits are in at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.  Sales-wise, it's pretty frigid out there.

Robert Redford's 10-day indie-film extravaganza is closing in on its final weekend with few, if any, big buys by the major studios and their smaller rivals—the sole exception being the Andrew Fleming-helmed Hamlet 2, a hilarious high school comedy starring British comic Steve Coogan, which Focus Features scooped up early Tuesday for a whopping $10 million.

Unlike past fests, which sparked fierce bidding wars for such films as Craig Brewer's Hustle & Flow, eventual Oscar nominee Little Miss Sunshine and last year's John Cusack vehicle Grace Is Gone, this year's Sundance has been relatively quiet on the sales front despite the bevy of A-list premieres that have seen the likes of Charlize Theron, Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Mischa Barton, Diddy and Sharon Stone gracing the red carpet.

Though that didn't stop more than a few celebrities from taking advantage of all that Park City has to offer.

"It's my first Sundance," said Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon, who turned out for last night's premiere of The Year of Getting to Know Us, in which he takes a rare dramatic turn.  "It's great.  It's snowing out. I went snowmobiling earlier today."

Besides Hamlet 2, the second biggest payday went to Clark Gregg's comedy drama Choke, whose worldwide rights were nabbed by Fox Searchlight  for an estimated $5 million.  The movie, a big-screen adaptation of Fight Club author Chuck Paluhniuk's novel, stars Sundance vet Sam Rockwell as a sex-addicted con artist.

Overture Films plunked down a reported $3.5 million for Henry Poole, a quirky dramedy featuring Luke Wilson and Radha Mitchell from director Mark Pellington (Arlington Road), who had a pretty good week along Main Street, as his other film, U23D, had its world premiere in Park City.

Perhaps it was the subdued mood of festival attendees after learning of Heath Ledger's tragic death earlier this week. Or maybe it was the ongoing writers' strike, which raised expectations of a feeding frenzy by distributors eager to beef up their slates should producers fail to reach a settlement soon with Hollywood scribes.

But by Wednesday, many of the Industry movers and shakers, such as Sheila Nevins, HBO's president of documentary programming, were on planes back to L.A. or New York, leaving it to lower-level minions to do the wheeling and dealing.

Outside of the aforementioned acquisitions, the only other picture to get a pickup so far was Frozen River, newcomer Courtney Hunt's debut feature about a working-class mom smuggling immigrants across the Canadian border to save her family.

The flick, which has earned dollops of praise, was purchased by Sony Pictures for low to mid six figures and is also being touted as a possible contender for the dramatic competition prize.

Beyond that, Tinseltown execs are said to be eyeing deals for a small list of indies, among them: Lance Hammer's Mississippi drama, Ballast; the soccer doc Kicking It; Randall Miller's winemaking tale Bottle Shock; Jennifer Phang's low-budget futuristic drama Half-Life; Russian mystery Mermaid, which the Weinstein Company is said to be eyeing; Phoebe in Wonderland, starring Patricia Clarkson; and Baghead, the latest entry from Jay and Mark Duplass, who last made a splash with their 2005 road movie The Puffy Chair.

On the documentary side, HBO Documentary Films was one of the first out of the gate, scoring a deal last weekend for The Black List: Volume One, a series of interviews with influential black icons like Colin Powell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Quick to follow was Zeitgeist Films, which snapped up the rights to Up the Yangtze, an exposé about China's rapid transformation through the eyes of the people living along the famed Chinese river flooded by the Three Gorges Dam. That film unspools in theaters in April.

About the same time, on Apr. 8, HBO Documentary Films will also premiere on the pay-cable channel another Sundance acquisition, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo. The doc has galvanized Sundance audiences to action by telling the heartbreaking story of rape survivors in the war-torn African country.

Asked whether she would have preferred a theatrical release, the filmmaker—who drew on her own experience as a rape victim to get the women to open up—praised HBO for providing a bigger forum to bring the horrendous crimes resulting from this terrible conflict to light.

”It could run for two weeks in sold out houses...and 12,000 people would see it.  But one showing on HBO, and 12 million will see it," Jackson told E! Online. "I see it more as an advocacy piece."

The cable channel also ponied up $1 million for domestic rights to Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Marina Zenovich's recounting of the great Polish director's 1970s child-rape case, while the Weinstein Company landed International rights for $600,000.

Other documentaries close to sealing a deal, meanwhile, include the Colin Farrell-narrated Kicking It, chronicling a group of homeless people competing in an international soccer competition, and Stacy Peralta's gangland exploration, Crips and Bloods.