Sundance sales off to a slow start

By this point in the festival two years ago, Fox Searchlight had wrapped up the final negotiations for the Sundance record-setting $10.5-million deal for “Little Miss Sunshine.” By early Saturday, there hadn’t been any sale remotely like it — let alone any news of a major acquisition. But buyers were starting to circle several well-received movies available for distribution.

The movie generating the most interest from acquisitions executives was “Sunshine Cleaning,” which stars Amy Adams and Emily Blunt as sisters struggling to make ends meet in Albuquerque. The two decide to start a business that scrubs down crime and suicide scenes. 

The second-hottest title so far was “The Wackness,” a comedy about a pot-dealing high school student (Josh Peck) and his eccentric, drug-addled therapist (Ben Kingsley). Among the buyers pursuing the movie was Harvey Weinstein, who showed up at the film’s ear-blasting after party.

The odds of producer Occupant Films and writer/director Jonathan Levine selling to Weinstein seem slim at best. The Weinstein Co. bought Occupant and Levine’s “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane” at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, but then  tried to ditch the movie in what was essentially a direct-to-video release. Occupant was able to find a new “Mandy Lane” distributor, and Senator Entertainment plans to release the acclaimed thriller this spring.

Other Sundance movies drawing distributor attention were “The Great Buck Howard” and “Bottle Shock.”

–- John Horn

("Sunshine Cleaning" photo courtesy Clean Sweep Productions)