Along with the strong current of film reviews, filmmaker interviews and trend stories, dispatches from the Sundance Film Festival these past eight days have included a steady stream of business news: Acquisitions. Which distributors have nabbed which films is a matter of interest to both industry players and fans hoping the movies they’ve read about and, in the case of Kickstarter projects, contributed to, enjoy an accessible theatrical life outside the festival circuit. Which of the event’s titles will make their way to an indie or art-house theatre near you?
Here is the list of Sundance films that have nabbed domestic distributors so far:
A24: A Most Violent Year
J.C. Chandor’s follow-up to his lauded (if Academy-snubbed) All is Lost, which stars Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford, A Most Violent Year continues the director’s streak of working with A-List actors, this time with Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis) and Jessica Chastain. The film is set in 1981, statistically the most violent year on record for New York City, and follows an immigrant and his family as they try to turn the American dream into their material reality. Judging by the movie’s title, we’re guessing most, if not all, of their illusions will be lost by film’s end.
Obvious Child
Rom-com with an edge: Girl meets boy. Girl hooks up with boy. Girl becomes pregnant. Girl gets an abortion. Then Girl falls in love with boy. Not your traditional romantic arc – nor your traditional outcome for the “Oh, no, I’m pregnant!” scenario – but one which resonated with Sundance audiences nonetheless. Star and real-life comedian Jenny Slate’s performance as the funny, warm Girl in question is reportedly one of the festival’s breakout turns.
Laggies
Keira Knightley as 28-year-old Megan is becoming increasingly bored with her job, the same friends she’s had since high school, and her boyfriend. When the latter proposes, Megan bolts, meeting and befriending 16-year-old Annika (Chloe Grace Moretz) at whose home she impulsively decides to hide out for a while. Will the two help each other grow up? A great script by first-time screenwriter Andrea Siegel and performances by the two leading women helped Laggies score a relatively early acquisition deal.
Focus Features: Wish I Was Here
One of the festival’s most anticipated films, for a few reasons: Wish I Was Here marks Zach Braff’s return to auteur form, as writer, director and star, following the great Sundance success of his Garden State back in 2004. Here’s fundraising efforts have also earned a good deal of press, as Braff, who’s been vocal about wanting to make movies that speak to and about his generation, chose to crowd-fund and secure backing through trendy Kickstarter. Reviews have been mixed, but Wish I Was Here does already have a loyal fan base in the Garden State contingent – not to mention in the many supporters who have a vested financial interest in the movie.
Sony Pictures Classics: Land Ho!
Two retirees embark on a road trip to Iceland, where they try to recapture their youth amid the party atmosphere of Reykjavik bars and nightclubs.
Whiplash
Adapted from Damien Chazelle’s short film of the same name, which won the Jury Award for Fiction at last year’s festival, and picking up roughly where that work left off, Whiplash has garnered some of the best reviews of the 2014 showcase. A young drummer must contend with a particularly demanding (to put it mildly) music teacher in this film whose intense drumming sequences aren’t to be missed.
IFC Films: God’s Pocket
Though John Slattery has helmed several episodes of “Mad Men,” God’s Pocket marks the actor’s first time directing a feature film. Fellow “Men” player Christina Hendricks stars, as does Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, and John Turturro. A suspicious accident at a construction site in a blue-collar town has fatal consequences.
Lionsgate/Roadside: The Skeleton Twins
Funny people Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader take a turn for the dramatic in this dramedy about estranged twins whose independent near-death experiences on the same day bring them together.
Fox Searchlight: Calvary
Any film that puts Brendan Gleeson front-and-center is all right with us – and, apparently, with the folks at Fox Searchlight. Gleeson is a kindhearted priest who, while attending to his fragile adult daughter and administering to the moral needs of his parish, senses the interference of sinister forces.
I Origins
A molecular biologist’s (Michael Pitt) study of the human eye has unforeseen and resounding implications. Such a vague tagline points to a humdinger of a cerebral experience.
ICM Partners: Infinitely Polar Bear
Infinitely Polar Bear is that rare breed of buzzy film that manages to secure distribution before the festival even opens. ICM Partners scooped up Bear the day before Sundance began, as did The Solution Entertainment Group, which will handle the film’s international rights. Mark Ruffalo stars as a bipolar father of two who is forced to look after his children on his own after his wife leaves to pursue her MBA.
Magnolia & Paramount: Happy Christmas
The Lena Dunham Movie does not in fact revolve around Lena Dunham, but rather about Anna Kendrick, who plays Dunham’s friend. The confusion is understandable, however, as Kendrick also happens to play the latest cinematic variation on the arrested-adolescent character Dunham has made so popular on her HBO series “Girls.” Kendrick is an “irresponsible twentysomething” who moves in with her older brother (Joe Swanberg, who also wrote and directed), his novelist wife (Melanie Lynskey) and their toddler son. Kendrick’s wild ways both jeopardize her relationship with her brother and help enliven the increasingly domestic world of her sister-in-law.
CNN Films & Lionsgate: Dinosaur 13
Paleontologist Peter Larson may have helped uncover the nearly intact fossilized skeleton of a 65-million-year-old TRex he and his partners subsequently christened “Sue,” but that’s only the beginning of the excitement in Dinosaur 13. The documentary follows Larson as he fights for the rights to Sue’s remains, with fellow paleontologists, museums, and Native American tribes all attempting to claim the fossil for themselves.
Pivot and Univision: Cesar’s Last Fast
As the title suggests, Fast chronicles Cesar Chavez’s last act of peaceful protest, a 36-day hunger strike Chavez hoped would draw attention to the plight of farm workers harmfully effected by the use of pesticides. The doc features contemporary footage of the iconic leader enduring his water-only diet.
Well Go USA: Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead
The sequel to 2009’s Nazi zombie horror flick, Dead Snow. What more can we say – or rather, do you need?
