The wheeling and dealing is heating up at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.
A few high-profile indie flicks have been picked up by major distributors in the early going at Robert Redford's annual Park City romp, but so far there's not been a huge feeding frenzy.
Kicking off the slate of early acquisitions, Paramount Classics paid $2.1 million Monday for the North American rights to The United States of Leland, a drama about a young man who kills a mentally retarded boy. The film, writing and directing debut of 28-year-old Matthew Ryan Hoge, stars Ryan Gosling, Don Cheadle, Chris Klein, Lena Olin and Kevin Spacey. (It was Spacey who, after reading the script, shepherded Leland to the big screen through his production company.)
Also getting picked up was The Cooler, a romantic drama set in Las Vegas starring William H. Macy as a loser hired by a casino to "cool" off the high rollers. He eventually falls for a cocktail waitress and his fortunes begin to change. That film was one of the first taken off the market, acquired by Lions Gate for an estimated $1.5 million.
The picture also features Alec Baldwin, Maria Bello, Ron Livingston, Paul Sorvino and 'N Syncer Joey Fatone, who appeared in last year's indie blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding and will soon make his TV debut on the spinoff, My Big Fat Greek Life.
Another film headed for the art-house circuit is filmmaker Catherine Hardwicke's Thirteen, a teenage drama written by its 13-year-old costar Nikki Reed about a young girl who begins to experiment with drugs, sex and petty crime, testing her relationship with her mother. By the festival's midpoint on Wednesday, Fox Searchlight announced it had spent $2 million for the film's worldwide rights (except for the U.K.). We're guessing the fact that the film also stars Holly Hunter didn't hurt.
Miramax Films, meanwhile, plunked down more than $1.5 million for the rights to the fest crowd-pleaser The Station Agent, a drama about a dwarf who takes up residence in an abandoned New Jersey train depot and and strikes up a friendship with a grief-stricken artist and a friendly Cuban hot dog vendor. The Tom McCarthy-helmed flick stars Patricia Clarkson.
Another Clarkson film (she's in four entries this year), Pieces of April, is involved in a bidding war that includes Miramax, Fine Line Features and Artisan. Made by InDigEnt, the New York-based digital film company that has made waves the past couple of years with low-budget, star-filled fare like Tadpole and Chelsea Walls, Pieces of April is a family comedy of errors about a young woman struggling to make a Thanksgiving dinner for her family. It also starring Katie Holmes and Oliver Platt and marks the directorial debut of About a Boy writer Peter Hedges.
April was thought to be an easy sell after scoring high accolades from festivalgoers following its Sunday premiere. But the inability to cinch a deal may be due to distributors being a bit more gun-shy after high-profile Sundance-spawned busts--for instance, Miramax snapped up Tadpole for $5 million a year ago and saw it gross only half that when it was released theatrically.
On the documentary side, first-time filmmaker Jennifer Dworkin's documentary Love & Diane, about a recovering crack addict and mother who returns home to her kids only to find that her eldest child is abusing drugs, was sold to small-time New York distributor Women Make Movies.
Other audience favorites expected to find a buyer include Danish director Thomas Vinterberg's latest, It's All About Love (currently fielding offers from several bidders) and HBO Films' American Splendor.
Films also generating good buzz and buyer interest include Die Mommy Die, Party Monster, dot the i and Bookies, writer-director Mark Illskey's follow up to Happy, Texas.
Tune in to E! News Live this week at 7 p.m. for exclusive celebrity interviews and the latest buzz live from Sundance.