The hotly touted breakout film of Sundance ’09 is not one of the name films. It’s a smaller dramedy called, “An Education” that studios, buyers, bloggers, journos and audiences have been going nuts for. Naturally, the film sold, but not to Fox Searchlight, which seemed to be in close-to-final negotiations on the film. Instead Sony Pictures Classics bought the film according to Variety, which apparently came rife with drama when CAA sellers deemed Searchlight‘s bid too low. The films sold for around $3 million.
“Coming into Sundance, we had a feeling [this] coming-of-age dramedy would probably be pretty good,” Defamer‘s wrote yesterday. “But as 282 lucky ticketholders at Sunday’s premiere soon discovered, ‘good’ isn’t the half of it. “‘An Education’ all but blew the marquee off the Egyptian Theater, where over 100 latecomers were turned away onto a swarming Main Street before director Lone Scherfig nervously announced not even she had yet seen her film outside the lab. She had nothing to worry about.”
23-year-old lead British actress Carey Mulligan is already being called the festival’s breakout star.
The Hollywood Reporter initially said sales at Sundance pics were “stuck” (aka “slow”), but now three days later, a “flurry” of deals have been made (ah, gotta love the impatient media; note a “flurry” is four films ;).
Lionsgate made its first purchase of James Strouse’s “The Winning Season,” a chronicle of a high-school basketball team coached by a recovering addict Sam Rockewell. Not sold yet, but Summit Entertainment is apparently was interested in the gay lovers film, “I Love You Phillip Morris” starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, but then walked away and took Ashton Kutcher’s “Spread.” No accounting for taste.
Jeffrey Wells seemed to love Nicolas Winding Refn‘s “Bronson” which he called, “audaciously directed.” “A stark, blunt prison drama (with two brief episodes outside the slammer) that’s more of a performance-art piece than anything else, it’s about an incorrigible, mentally thick, ultra-violent career criminal who lives to strike blows and inflict pain and bang his shaved head against the proverbial wall.”
Spoutblog notes, “here’s another possible reason for slow sales this year: too many co-repped films make for confusing negotiations.”