Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise’s long-time producing partner, is 
This Hollywood Reporter story about Magnolia/Magnet’s acquistition of the Michael Rappaport psycho-pharma superhero comedy Special has a major inaccuracy: Gregg Goldstein says the film “premiered last month at Sundance,” but actually, it premiered two years ago at Sundance, where alongside Wristcutters: A Love Story, it was the subject of much “WTF? If THAT sold, why didn’t THIS sell?” buzz in the wake of the massive Little Miss Sunshine deal. The fan boy sites were, predictably, all over it, but it also earned glowing praise from international publications, and from director Jason Reitman, who was at the festival with his own Thank You For Smoking.
So what made Magnolia suddenly interested now? Goldstein says it’s finally getting picked up because Rappaport has a TV show and co-star Josh Peck is expected to break out via a film that *did* premiere at Sundance 2008, The Wackness. I’d say the latter probably has more to do with it than the former, but then, I thought The War at Home had been canceled like five years ago. But I guess this means we can expect a Special release somewhere on the calendar near Peck’s other film, in order to capitalize on The Wackness‘ Sony Classics-footed publicity budget.
You can watch Special’s circa-Sundance 2006 trailer here.
