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Sundance News 01/20/09: An Education is Too Expensive

By Christopher Campbell posted 10 months ago

A few films were sold in the past 24 hours, but Lone Sherfig’s An Education was not one of them. Reportedly, Fox Searchlight offered around $1 million for the Nick Hornby-scripted coming-of-age drama, yet the film’s co-reps CAA and Endeavor are asking closer to $10 million. As if any title could seriously expect that high an amount during the “subdued” Sundance of ‘09.
Oh, by the way, here’s another possible reason for slow sales this year that we missed yesterday: too many co-repped films make for confusing negotiations.
IFC Films held a press conference yesterday to reveal that, for the first time, the distributor will release a film to VOD day-and-date with its world premiere at this Spring’s SXSW. The film will be Joe Swanberg’s Alexander the Last, and it’s one of a bunch of new titles, including the latest from both Phillipe Garrel and Denys Arcand, slated for IFC’s Festival Direct VOD channel. Steven Soderbergh says that these days filmmakers’ have to “let go of the fantasy” of receiving conventional theatrical releases for their work.
Also from the IFC press conference: Karina asks about whether on demand data will ever be released a la box office figures; Swanberg tells festival directors that its up to them whether or not VOD kills festival runs; Soderbergh calls BluRay “the worst launch of a new format in the history of formats.”
And in other IFC VOD news, the NY Times got it wrong last week when it reported that IFC’s hoped-for 250,000 VOD viewers for Soderbergh’s Che would be the equivalent of an $18 million box office take. The figure, corrected during a Sundance panel discussion, would be more like $1.8 million.

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Festivals, Indies, Sundance 2009

Sex, The Mailroom, and Perez: Trade Roughage, 6/21/07

By Karina Longworth posted 2 years ago

***According to Variety, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton lost his web host yesterday, after failing to heed their repeated requests to halt the use of stolen copyright imagery. The notoriously blog-hostile trade couldn’t help but gleefully posit the incident as “the first hit against bloggerazzi star Perez Hilton’s empire,” even though the site was back online via a different host after a couple of hours. If you’re unfamiliar with Perez’ infamous MS Paint trickery, see a representative specimen above.

***Speaking, as Perez often does, of out-of-control bad boys, disgraced former HBO executive Chris Albrecht is quietly, unofficially shepherding the Sex and the City movie to the big screen. Variety claims HBO won’t officially link Albrecht to the film yet, “because the picture is just in the discussion stage with distributors”–but at what point is it appropriate to admit that you’ve picked an alleged serial girlfriend-beater to help further a brand about post-feminist empowerment?

***On the other end of the Hollywood executive spectrum, The Hollywood Reporter says Brian Grazer (who allows Creative Artists Agency underlings to pitch projects to him once a year) will team with Universal to produce Coma Boy, based on a pitch generated by a kid working in the CAA mailroom.

***Finally, the team that brought you Disturbia are next planning a feature version of Stargirl, a popular young-adult novel about a vegetarian teenager.

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Hollywood