Salon.com > indie movies http://www.salon.com Fri, 24 May 2013 18:34:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Five things Sundance can tell us about the future of film http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/five_things_sundance_can_tell_us_about_the_future_film_industry_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/five_things_sundance_can_tell_us_about_the_future_film_industry_partner/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13207592 The deal making begins weeks before the celebrities touch down in Park City, Utah, a pop-up center of the universe for the culture industry during the ten-day run of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Open Road Films buys the Steve Jobs biopic jOBS, starring Ashton Kutcher as the Apple co-founder, long before audiences clap, yawn, or both at its Sundance Closing Weekend premiere. Other movies including Mud, starring Matthew McConaughey, and No, featuring Gael García Bernal, also arrive with deals intact. The pre-fest deals, as well as decisions by filmmakers from former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl (Sound City) to Shane Carruth (Upstream Color) to take on a DIY release model, lead to an inevitable question: with the ability to build communities of fans and supporters 24/7 on digital platforms, are the time, energy, and money spent getting in and getting to Sundance still necessary?
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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/five_things_sundance_can_tell_us_about_the_future_film_industry_partner/feed/ 0 Top picks at Sundance http://www.salon.com/2013/01/22/top_picks_at_sundance/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/22/top_picks_at_sundance/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2013 20:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13178786 The 2013 Sundance Film Festival is well underway, giving American and independent filmmakers a chance to showcase their talent and vie for a chance to sell their films to major distributors. And the frenzy has begun: Among the first picks included are "Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer,” a documentary about the Russian punk activist band, bought by HBO, and “Don Jon’s Addiction,” a comedy about a man (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) addicted to porn, has been bought by Relativity Media for $4 million.

The biggest deal, however (and as Deadline notes, "one of the craziest for deal making in recent memory"), is for "The Way, Way Back" the Steve Carell-starring movie, which went for nearly $10 million. Fox Searchlight won the bidding war, coming out ahead of Lionsgate, FilmDistrict, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., and has committed to a wide theatrical release of the film.

The deal has turned heads because, as the New York Times explains, this type of bid is now a rarity at Sundance:

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