January 2008

After a slow start, the Sundance Film Festival picked up speed yesterday as Focus Features snagged the comedy "Hamlet 2" for a near record $10 million in an all-night bidding war.

The opening weekend of the annual Park City, Utah, cinema showcase had mile-long traffic jams, packed theaters and even some snow, but very few films emerged with distribution deals.

Then around 7 a.m. Tuesday, Focus Features, a unit of General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, picked up "Hamlet 2" following a protracted bidding war involving Fox Searchlight, Weinstein Co., Lionsgate, Picturehouse, Miramax, Summit Entertainment and Warner Independent Pictures.

The deal, brokered by the Creative Artists Agency, is shy of the record set by "Little Miss Sunshine," which sold for $10.5 million in 2006. Although many film distributors believe the market is overheated, the sale of "Hamlet 2" suggests a growing interest in independent films that are lighter and more youth-oriented. Another film about life inside a high school, the evocative documentary "American Teen," has also stirred a lot of interest among buyers.

"Hamlet 2," which stars Steve Coogan as a failed actor turned high-school drama teacher, tells the quirky tale of a class that stages a sequel to "Hamlet." "Hamlet 2" was executive produced by Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, who produced "Little Miss Sunshine," and it cost a little more than $9 million to make.

Bidding began immediately after the film screened at 5:30 Monday night to a sold-out theater of 450 people. Agents from CAA each received as many as 30 calls within the hour along with a flurry of emails.

The bidding war was fueled in part by the enthusiastic reaction from the crowd at the film's screening. After the premiere, every major distributor huddled outside the Library Center Theater, working up strategies for acquiring the film. CAA barred bidders from its sales condo unless they had solid offers on the table. Focus emerged as the leading bidder around 3 a.m.

Focus's chief executive, James Schamus, who has not bought a film at Sundance since 2005 when he purchased "Brick," says that his company prefers to make its own films: "We don't have the appetite for acquisitions that our peers do."

But "Hamlet 2" is an exception, Mr. Schamus says. "When our senior team walked out of that screening, every single one of them believed that it was a film that we needed to have."

"Hamlet 2" was among the Sundance films on which buyers had staked high hopes. But many of those films -- including "The Wackness," with Mary-Kate Olsen, "Sunshine Cleaning," with Amy Adams, and "What Just Happened?" with Robert De Niro -- disappointed buyers and failed to sell immediately.

Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, says that because "Hamlet 2" is a "light youth-oriented comedy," its commercial prospects are strong. He also noted that some of the serious films from last year's festival performed poorly at the box office. For example, "Grace Is Gone," for which Weinstein Co. paid about $4 million last year, brought in only slightly more than $36,000 at the U.S. box office, though the film was showing in limited release for award consideration and will be re-released at the end of January. "People don't want to get burned twice, so they go for something different," Mr. Bernard says.

"Hamlet 2" was a late addition to the Sundance schedule, in part because it was put together so quickly. Eric Eisner, a producer of the film and son of Michael Eisner, former CEO of Walt Disney Co., secured the script shortly after last year's Sundance. The film was then shot in six weeks, but it didn't wrap until the end of October. Eric Eisner persuaded Geoffrey Gilmore, the director of Sundance, to look at a rough cut of the movie.

Mr. Eisner says that once the film was accepted, editing and post-production continued right up until the last minute. The movie was locked up on Friday -- just three days before the film's screening.

The success of the film, Mr. Eisner says, lies in the way it "blends elements of highbrow and lowbrow." He describes it as a parody of all those inspirational teacher films" such as "Dangerous Minds" and "Dead Poets Society," both of which are referenced numerous times in the film.

The only major film to sell over the weekend was "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," a sympathetic portrayal of the Oscar-winning director and his legal trials. HBO bought the domestic rights while Weinstein Co. purchased most international rights for a figure estimated at $200,000 to $400,000.

Yesterday, two other films sparked some interest. Fox Searchlight acquired the world rights to "Choke," adapted from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, for about $5 million. The film, the directorial debut of Clark Gregg, tracks the story of a sex-addicted son (Sam Rockwell) and his relationship with his mother (Anjelica Huston). Overture Films purchased the U.S. rights to the comedic drama "Henry Poole Is Here" for about $3.5 million.

REPORTED  JANUARY 12, 2008

At Sundance, "Once" isn't enough. Many of the movies at this year's Sundance Film Festival echo the themes of past festival hits, such as the family drama-comedy "Little Miss Sunshine" and the rock musical "Once."

Familiar subjects like family dysfunction, high-school melodrama and classic rock are dominating the festival, which opens Thursday. The lineup reflects the increasingly blurred line between the studio and independent film worlds, as indie filmmakers repeat tested formulas to appeal to the mass audiences that studios covet. As the writers' strike drags on and studios search for fresh material, bidding wars for Sundance movies are expected to break records.

While music-inspired films can sometimes spell box-office trouble, Sundance 2008 includes a number of music-focused flicks. Showing in the festival's high-profile closing slot is "CSNY Déjà Vu," which looks back critically at the 1960s by focusing on the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young "Freedom of Speech Tour" of 2006. "U2 3D" presents the Irish rock band's 2005-2006 global "Vertigo" tour in 3D. And "Patti Smith: Dream of Life" is a documentary about the acclaimed punk poet.

From the same producers who made "Little Miss Sunshine" comes a film with a similar title about difficult familial relationships: "Sunshine Cleaning" tells the story of two troubled sisters who enter the biohazard waste removal business. Other films about distressed families include the drama "Sleepwalking," which traces what happens to a 12-year-old girl when her mother (Charlize Theron) takes off and her uncle (Nick Stahl) raises her on his own, and the comedic "Smart People," with Sarah Jessica Parker and "Juno" star Ellen Page.

Geoffrey Gilmore, director of the Sundance festival, says that inevitably some films will repeat themes. "The industry is exhausted," he says. But he adds that there are "a million fresh takes on an issue."

He says that many of the films focus on quirky, dysfunctional families not because they are trying to copy the recipe behind "Little Miss Sunshine" but because it's easiest to address the world's troubles "by not directly engaging in issues, and instead telling a personal, family story."

Additional highlights this year include Robert De Niro as a frenzied film producer in Barry Levinson's comedy "What Just Happened?," Mos Def in director Michel Gondry's "Be Kind Rewind" and Morgan Spurlock's documentary "Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?" Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's "In Bruges," starring Colin Farrell, opens the festival.

More than 50,000 people are expected to attend Sundance this year, up from 36,000 four years ago. Routinely, cellphones at Sundance stop working because so many people crowd Main Street during opening weekend. Studio executives say that when closing multimillion-dollar deals to purchase film rights, they have to drive six miles down the highway to the interstate to regain service.

Harvey Weinstein, the studio head and producer behind major indie and mainstream hits like "Pulp Fiction" and "The English Patient," says that buying a film at Sundance is "an endurance test. You see the film at 8, start bidding at 10 and finish at 6 a.m. There is another tone at the other festivals -- at Cannes, you see the film, but then there are other things to do before buying, there's a fabulous party to go to and you're in a tuxedo rather than a ski jacket."

Nearly half of the 64 films in competition at Sundance this year were made by first-time directors. Nevertheless, some say that the festival has changed in the past couple of years.

"It used to be a launching festival," says Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics -- meaning that Sundance is now a better place to buy a film than to generate publicity for a movie that's already been purchased. "It's changed dramatically -- now it's all about the middlemen, about the deal that closes at 4 a.m. while other buyers are banging down the door and sitting out in the cold."

This year, only slightly more than a dozen of the films at Sundance boast distributors before the festival begins -- in part because sales agents are holding out for on-site bidding wars.

Sundance's Mr. Gilmore says that last year the films that sold at the festival itself went for more money than ever before: about $45 million in total, he estimates.

Studio executives worry that this year some prices will get pushed up into the range of $12 million to $15 million per film owing to increased demand for material, persistence of the writers' strike, and prospective director and actor strikes.

Buyers say they are looking carefully at three star-packed films aimed at young audiences: "Hamlet 2" (with Elisabeth Shue), about a high-school drama course that puts on a musical sequel to Shakespeare's play; "The Wackness" (with Mary-Kate Olsen), about a high-school kid growing up in New York who pays his therapist with marijuana; and "Assassination of a High School President" (with Mischa Barton), about a newspaper nerd and popular girl at a Catholic high school who investigate stolen SAT exams.

A number of documentaries are commanding buyers' attention, including "American Teen" (about high-school seniors in the Midwest) and newcomer Chris Waitt's "A Complete History of My Sexual Failures," which chronicles its director's love life through doctors, ex-girlfriends and his mother.

Mr. Spurlock, who scored a Sundance hit with "Super Size Me" in 2004, returns with "Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?," which features the filmmaker's whimsical journey through the Middle East to track down the al Qaeda head.

There are a record seven films from the Middle East, but many of them focus on the fringes of society there rather than the war in Iraq. "Slingshot Hip Hop" examines the rap scene in Palestine, where the music is charged with lyrics about poverty and politics. "Be Like Others" chronicles the lives of Iranian transsexuals and the rise of gender-reassignment surgery in the country. And "Strangers," an Israeli film, follows the love story between an Israeli man and Palestinian woman who meet during the World Cup finals in Germany.

Sundance began in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival; Robert Redford took it over in 1985 to showcase American independent film; it was renamed the Sundance Film Festival in 1991. Many of today's most famous filmmakers got their big break at Sundance, including Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch. The event has also launched such films as "sex, lies, and videotape," "Clerks" and "The Blair Witch Project."

Social activities pack the Sundance calendar, including concerts and presentations featuring some of the singers from this year's films (Patti Smith and U2's Bono are expected) and late-night parties beginning at 3 a.m. and ending only after the first screenings start around 8 a.m.

Not everyone enjoys the hoopla. Errol Morris, the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, likens Sundance to "spending a week in a meat locker. ... I'd rather be eviscerated by the Iroquois than go," he says. Mr. Morris's film "A Brief History of Time" won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1992. "Sundance has been very kind to me," he says, "but I have logged my time."