Sundance set to generate Hollywood feeding frenzy

By Anne Thompson

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The Sundance Film
Festival, which gets under way Thursday in Park City, Utah, is
returning to smaller-scale indie fare, its programmers have
promised.

But that approach isn’t scaring away any of the Hollywood
studios, which are descending on the resort in search of the
next big commercial thing.

Festival director Geoff Gilmore wants more small films to
find the right distributors for the right marketing niche. He
cited films on this year’s schedule such as the morality tale
“Forgiven,” “which came out of nowhere”; the Iraq War
documentary “The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez”; or the
microbudget “Steel City.”

“Fox Searchlight doesn’t define what is an independent
film,” he said. “I’ve always cared about expanding the market,
not catering to it.”

A feeding frenzy seems inevitable, however, as hungry
buyers circle a slew of indie projects that no one has seen.
They are all chasing the same holy grail: accessibly
entertaining, low-budget, high-quality movies with known stars
and indie cred.

The pictures with the greatest heat are inevitably those
with stars. “Little Miss Sunshine” is by far the festival’s
most anticipated film — largely because it stars funnyman
Steve Carell, just off “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”

“It might go for too much money,” Warner Independent
Pictures’ Paul Federbush said. “It’s hard not to get caught up
in the frenzy.”

The fact that its rookie filmmakers, Jonathan Dayton and
Valerie Faris, are hot music video directors doesn’t hurt
either.

The first weekend is front-loaded with star-driven product,
beginning with opening-night film “Friends With Money,” a comic
drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Frances McDormand.

Other titles set to generate buzz include “The Night
Listener,” starring Robin Williams; Michel Gondry’s “The
Science of Sleep,” starring Gael Garcia Bernal; “The
Illusionist,” with Edward Norton; “Sherrybaby,” headlining
Maggie Gyllenhaal; “Stephanie Daley,” featuring Tilda Swinton;
and “Half Nelson,” starring Ryan Gosling.

But the films that garner the most Sundance hype are not
always the most successful. Conversely, some of the Sundance
selections make their mark only after the festival is over.

Last year, for example, “March of the Penguins” barely
registered on the Sundance radar until Warner Independent
Pictures swiftly closed a deal with 50-50 partner National
Geographic Films to acquire the French-language nature
documentary and re-edited it into an English-language version;
it then grossed more than $77 million. Several smaller
acquisitions from Sundance 2005 — from Samuel Goldwyn Films’
“The Squid and the Whale” to Sony Pictures Classics’ “Junebug”
– performed surprisingly well thanks to rave reviews.

Among this year’s minnows is the comedy “The Darwin
Awards,” starring Winona Ryder, Joseph Fiennes and Metallica.
Three-time Sundance player Finn Taylor spent seven years
arranging independent financing.

“I hope people are buying into the unique script and
characters,” Taylor said. “We realized as the process unfolded
that the studios would make a watered-down version of what we
wanted to do. A watered-down version of ‘The Darwin Awards’
wouldn’t be funny.”

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter