sundance deal Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Bloggers are up in arms that Sony Pictures Classics has acquired Sundance buzz title The Wackness. The film has been pursued since its debut on the opening weekend of the festival. Among other things, The Wackness gained notoriety as "the one where Ben Kingsley kisses Mary-Kate Olsen," as well as "the one our own Scott Weinberg didn't like as much as everyone else did."

indieWIRE posted a news item on Saturday evening that Sony Classics was in the process of closing a deal for North American rights to the film. Anne Thompson at Variety confirmed that the deal closed, and also pointed to three sites that had issues with Sony Classics: Neil Miller (Film School Rejects), Peter Sciretta (Slashfilm) and Alex Billington (First Showing). Other writers have also weighed in: Edward Douglas (ComingSoon.net) and Josh Tyler (Cinema Blend). The complaint is that Sony Classics has had a poor track record over the past couple of years and someone like Fox Searchlight would do a better job with marketing a film that critics think needs to be seen.

Sony Classics has long followed the traditional, platform method of releasing arthouse films, a strategy that has paid off big time in the past and that tends to minimize losses if a particular title doesn't catch on. It can be frustrating if you don't live in New York or Los Angeles (it took Persepolis seven weeks before it reached my area). Fox Searchlight also platforms, but is usually quicker to take a release wide. They also seem more willing to spend more money on TV and Internet advertising. Juno is a huge success, but that's a once-a-year (if you're lucky) phenomenon. We'll see how Sony Classics does with The Wackness.

The crowds at Sundance may be thinning out, but the deals are continuing. In their second acquisition of the week, Sony Pictures Classics nabbed North American rights to Baghead, the new comedy from the filmmaking team of Mark and Jay Duplass. Variety says that the negotiations were not concluded until very early Friday morning; the purchase price is said to be somewhere in the mid to six figures.

Growing up in New Orleans, the Duplass Brothers made many "films" in their hometown before moving to Austin and attending college there. They worked as film editors before resuming their filmmaking career. Several award winning shorts led to their first and quite wonderful feature, The Puffy Chair, which premiered at Sundance in 2005. Mark Duplass played a key role in that role, and has also acted in other films, such as Joe Swanberg's sprightly Hannah Takes the Stairs.

Baghead brings together four ambitious and horny actors as they spend a weekend in the woods, hashing out ideas for a film script, teasing out mutual attractions, and dealing with a bare-chested man with a bag over his head (see accompanying picture). It's a "terrific, genre-bending" accomplishment, declared SXSW Producer Matt Dentler at his indieWIRE blog.

Earlier in the week, Sony Classics picked up rights to the drama Frozen River, so this looks a good complementary addition to their release slate. Perhaps it will play a few more festivals to build more word of mouth in advance of a theatrical release.

Straight dramatic features have not been feeling the love from distributors at Sundance so far, with most of the deal action concentrated on documentaries (American Teen, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired), comedies (Hamlet 2) or comedy/dramas (Choke, Henry Poole is Here). But leave it to Sony Pictures Classics to step up to the plate and acquire the rights to a well-received drama about impoverished single mothers. Variety is reporting that the distributor has purchased US rights to Frozen River "for a low to mid-six figures."

Expanded by debut director Courtney Hunt from her short film of the same title, Frozen River has already received some very warm notices (sorry, couldn't resist). The wonderful, versatile, and extremely busy Melissa Leo plays a woman suddenly abandoned in a desperate state by her gambling husband. Unable to even put a decent meal on the table for her two sons, she forms an unlikely partnership with another struggling mother (Misty Upham) to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States.

Sony Pictures Classics is known as a classy outfit; for example, their Oscar hopefuls this year include Best Animated Film nominee Persepolis and Best Foreign Language Film nominee The Counterfeiters. They were in the running for American Teen, but dropped out a couple of days ago.

Frozen River sounds like the type of small, rural drama that will require tender loving care to make its mark in the cold, cruel world of arthouse exhibition. For the sake of quality independent films dealing with subjects seldom seen, let's hope they succeed.

IFC Films just sent around a press release announcing their acquisition of Wordplay, Patrick Creadon's doc on crossword puzzle guru Will Shortz. It's IFC's second buy of the fest, after picking up Bent Hamer's Factotum, and their Jonathan Sehring couldn't be more pleased. "This has been one of the most rewarding Sundance experiences in the history of IFC,” Sehring said. “With our acquiring Factotum at the start and announcing the launch of IFC’s First Take, we felt it couldn’t get any better. Then Wordplay captured the hearts of the entire team, and we simply couldn’t live without it."  IFC hasn't released financial details on the deal, but they did say they plan to release the doc sometime this year.