J.LO, Britney and P. Diddy are there, the paparazzi are swarming and “TRL”-like mobs are squealing but beneath the celebrity hoopla, the real business of Sundance continues apace.
Though lacking in the $10 million acquisitions of past years, this year’s festival has seen a number of indie films snapped up for distribution.
Miramax just inked a deal worth more than $1.5 million for “The Station Agent,” New York actor Tom McCarthy’s first feature, about a train-crazy dwarf who lives in an abandoned New Jersey depot, which Peter Dinklage and Sundance belle-of-the-ball Patricia Clarkson.
Buyers have also been circling another Clarkson film the popular competition entry “Pieces of April,” about a black-sheep daughter’s attempts to throw a Thanksgiving dinner for her family with bids reportedly reaching as high as $4 million.
“Thirteen,” a provocative drama about bad-girl seventh-graders, starring Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood, has been picked up by Fox Searchlight for about $2 million, and Paramount Classics bought “The United States of Leland,” which was produced by Kevin Spacey’s Triggerstreet Productions and stars Sundance regular Ryan Gosling as a teenager who kills a handicapped boy.
Lions Gate reportedly paid $1.5 million for “The Cooler,” starring William H. Macy as a gambler on a losing streak, and the tiny New York distributor Women Make Movies picked up the documentary “Love & Diane,” about a recovering crack addict.
Bids are rolling in for the crowd-pleasers “dot the i,” a Brit romance starring Gael Garcia Bernal and hot newcomer James D’Arcy; the futuristic thriller “It’s All About Love,” with Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix; and the gleefully camp dark comedy “Party Monster,” starring Macaulay Culkin as real-life New York club-kid killer Michael Alig and Seth Green as his sidekick James St. James.
Film buyers prowling Sundance also have their eye on the surreal horror film “Nightstalker”; the very funny “Die Mommy Die,” a retro Hollywood satire featuring theater veteran Charles Busch in drag; Mark (“Happy, Texas”) Illsley’s “Bookies,” a crime caper starring Nick Stahl and Rachael Leigh Cook; and “American Splendor,” a quasi-documentary based on the life and work of cult cartoonist Harvey Pekar.