Sundance film deals fast, furious

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The projector barely cooled off after "La Misma Luna" had its premiere screening last Sunday before five distributors were courting the Spanish-language family film starring America Ferrera.

The film's deal broker, John Sloss of Cinetic Media, stashed each competitor in a different room of his five-bedroom Park City condo and went between them, "upping the ante through each bedroom. It lasted nine hours," recalls the movie's Sundance publicist, Jim Dobson.

The movie sold in a joint partnership of Weinstein Co. and Fox Searchlight for $5 million, a record for a Spanish-language independent film.

It's a good example of how deals are made at the Sundance Film Festival - often hammered out through hours of intense haggling conducted all over Park City, any time of day or night. And this year, there are plenty of them. By Friday afternoon, at least a dozen films had found distributors, with more negotiations in the works.

"I feel this is really a landmark year for the festival," said Geoffrey Gilmore, the festival's director of program- ming.

Films purchased this year build on successes of past Sundance films, including last year's "Little Miss Sunshine," now an Oscar contender.

When the festival opened Jan. 18, some predicted slow sales, with a slate of dark, depressing films scaring distributors away. But bidding picked up a few days later as good reviews poured in.

Though quality undoubtedly has something to do with the deal-making, it was also a matter of psychology: Excitement bred more excitement, sparking intense bidding wars. "I sometimes think there's a wave that hits and some companies start to buy and then other companies start to buy," Gilmore said.

Helping stir the frenzy was the return of veteran Harvey Weinstein, whose Weinstein Co. (founded in 2005 after he left Miramax) was at the center of a few battles.

Mitchell Lichtenstein, whose horror-comedy "Teeth" was one of the first films sold this year (to Weinstein, in partnership with Lion's Gate), says he never expected this kind of success with a movie he knows won't appeal to everyone.

His first success was getting in at all. "We really submitted it thinking they might want it for their midnight series," he said. With the movie placed in the more prestigious Dramatic Competition, audiences "see it more the way I hoped it would be seen. Going to Sundance elevated it, and being in competition puts it on another level."

By Friday, Dobson had deals on three of the five Sundance films he represented. He also did publicity for "ClubÂland" and "How She Move."

He says they were good movies, but the general deal-making blitz didn't hurt. "It's really remarkable, because in the past, we have some that haven't sold for a while, maybe even a year," he said. "Everyone was in a great mood because the feeding frenzy was going on."

If one studio starts bidding or a couple films get hot, others follow, Dobson said. The studios need to round out their annual offerings, and they look good when they seem to have a lot of spending money.

The biggest sale this year so far is "Son of Rambow," a British film about a couple of misfit kids obsessed with Sylvester Stallone's Rambo movie "First Blood." It sold for at least $7 million - $3 million less than "Little Miss Sunshine."

Gilmore says he doesn't care how much the movies sell for, but every deal helps, especially because they mean people nationwide will be able to see these movies after the festival, which ends Sunday.

"It is tremendously important for this festival year to year. You want to help films that come from this festival find broader audiences," he said.

Director David Sington's "In the Shadow of the Moon," a documentary about the Apollo space program, scored not one but two deals, with Discovery Channel for U.S. television rights and ThinkFilm for theatrical distribution.

"It's extremely gratifying when so many distributors were going after the film," he said, recounting a competitive auction that went on until 3 a.m.

Though the money and the distribution are nice, Sington says they weren't the highlight of his festival experience. That, he says, came when he showed the movie at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City.

"The audience was fantastically demonstrative and obviously excited," he said, in a response he calls "overwhelming."

"When Apollo landed on the moon, the whole audience burst into spontaneous applause," he said.

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* CHRISTY KARRAS can be contacted at ckarras @sltrib.com or 801-257-8604.