Aside from the Brooklyn’s Finestdeal, there haven’t been any major acquisitions in Park City yet, even after a full weekend of significant premieres. The Hollywood Reporter headlines with “Sales stuck” but optimistically notes the following titles are expected to be picked up soon: Humpday; Amreeka; The Killing Room; Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire.
One reason for such a slow sales weekend may be that one of the only distributors with a lot of money to spend is IFC Films, the head of which told the New York Times, “We’re not going to get into a bidding war. That’s not our business.”
Tech company B-Side Entertainment, which last year was a partner in the release of Super High Me, is now becoming a full-fledged distribution player. With $4.25 million in financing, B-Side aims to release 10 films in 2009, whether theatrically or via other outlets.
2008 Sundance doc Flow: For the Love of Waterhas been acquired by Sundance Channel, along with 25 other films including David Lynch’s Inland Empire and Eraserhead, to air on the cable station in 2009.
Another 2008 selection, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, has also been picked up. Peace Arch will release the film this Spring.
The Sundance Film Festival had it’s first major deal go down Saturday night as young distributor Senator Entertainment (in a co-venture with Sony Pictures Worldwide) picked up North American rights to Antoine Fuqua’s admittedly unfinished Brooklyn’s Finest for a price tag of less than $5 million (with a marketing commitment of $10 million).
Other acquisitions made just before and since the festival began include the following:
Another doc, Brothers at War, was bought by Samuel Goldwyn Films for a U.S. theatrical release.
Danish documentary Burma VJwent to HBO for a theatrical run at NYC’s Film Forum and cable broadcast.
E1 Films Canada picked up Canadian rights to Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls.
Sony Classics finally confirmed that it had indeed bought North American rights to Carlos Cuaron’s Rudo y Cursi.
All these pickups have been added to SpoutBlog’s Sundance Deals chart, which will continue to be updated throughout the festival. So remember to keep checking back and bookmark the post if you haven’t yet.
Here’s our running tally of each of the distribution deals announced just before, throughout the course of, and just after the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. We will update this post whenever new information comes in, so bookmark it and keep checking back for the newest latest.
The cat is out of the bag for Paper Hearts, a new movie starring Michael Cera about his real-life relationship with actress Charlyne Yi (Knocked Up). The part-doc, part-scripted comedy was apparently hoping to slip into the 2009 Sundance Film Festival completely under the radar in order to keep expectations in check. Now we’re all talking about it, and it’s sure to be one of the hottest tickets in Park City (as long as it’s indeed selected for the fest). Other titles expected to be named next week for the Sundance slate include the Ashton Kutcher starrer Spread, the Nick Hornby-scripted An Education and Antoine Fuqua’s Brooklyn’s Finest.
In other European cinema news, due to the current economy, both the San Sebastian and CineKid film festivals are on the verge of going out of business.
“Antoine’s the best. I couldn’t think of anybody better to direct this movie than Antoine Fuqua. He’s got a great sense of the characters. He’s not from New York, but he got out here and just wanted to be around everything Brooklyn, soak it up.”
That’s first-time screenwriter Michael Martin, in the midst of telling me his amazing Cinderella story, which begins with a tollbooth clerk from East New York writing an original screenplay called Brooklyn’s Finest and ends with the script being produced by Paramount with Mr. Fuqua (Training Day) directing.
I knew nothing of that story when I discovered the film shooting in my Brooklyn neighborhood last month. My first reaction to the sight of a huge Hollywood crew and thugged-out extras in gold chains was, another bigass Ho’wood King-Kong-ain’t-got-nuthin perp pageant. But, hanging out with the crew–the friendliest and most accessible I’ve ever observed– I wanted to believe that these nice people weren’t just here for pulp plunder.
Midday, May 27, 2008. I was on the edge of East NY, Brooklyn, looking for a shop that sold $10 Boost phone cards. Not the $20 ones– what am I, Trump?
Somebody told me to go over to Pitkin Avenue in Brownsville, across the L train tracks. Once there, I stumbled across a great commotion at the Vad Dyke Houses housing project. Crowds were gathered and men with walkie talkies darted about. A crime scene. No, a movie shoot. I went up to a short black woman with dreads, a headset and a hardware store full of items hanging from her cargo pants.
“What’s shooting?” I asked. “Brooklyn’s Finest, a movie,” she said. “Cop stuff, huh?” “Well, sorta. It’s the director who did Training Day, Antoine Fuqua.” “Ah, Fuqua,” I said, remembering how much I love that director’s tactile widescreen compositions but mostly loathe his vision of humanity.
Never mind. I had my digital recorder on me, so I whipped it out and decided to play Film Journalist with the cute P.A. “Can I interview you?”
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Aside from the Brooklyn’s Finest 
The Sundance Film Festival had it’s first major deal go down Saturday night as young distributor Senator Entertainment (in a co-venture with Sony Pictures Worldwide) picked up North American rights to Antoine Fuqua’s admittedly unfinished Brooklyn’s Finest for a price tag of less than $5 million (with a marketing commitment of $10 million).
