Despite the “hits” at last year’s Sundance Film Festival tanking at the box-office (“Brittany Runs A Marathon,” “Late Night”) distributors still seem to be in a very buying mood again this year, so much so that every single one of the acquisitions can’t be mentioned in a single article. Despite last year’s disappointments, the cost for distributors to land high-profile films at Sundance keeps going up. And yet, many of the films that have been bought so far this year don’t necessarily seem like automatic hits. Some buyers just never learn.
Take for example Alan Ball’s pedantic “Uncle Frank,” a film so ingrained in ‘90s Oscar-bait that it makes “Green Book” look like a maverick statement. Amazon bought the Paul Bettany-led film for a ridiculous $12 million. This ‘70s-set story about a young Southern and her closeted uncle will be lucky to break even at the box-office, especially with the already middling reviews it has gotten thus far.
A little better-received, but not enthusiastically, mind you, was director David Bruckner’s by-the-books horror flick “The Night House,” which Searchlight Pictures reportedly paid $12 million to land the distribution rights for. Starring Rebecca Hall, the film has a recent widow being haunted by the supernatural presence of her deceased husband. Despite Hall going all in with her performance, the film felt too familiar in its over-reliance on very loud jump scares. “Hereditary” this isn’t.
Even more money was splurged on the cold-war spy drama, “Ironbark,” which Lionsgate bought just yesterday. A little too anxious to jump the gun, the studio is rumored to have spent $6 million for the Dominic Cooke-directed film, a token spy drama which, nevertheless, delivers enough thrills for me to recommend. Despite the presence of Benedict Cumberbatch, “Ironbark” is the kind of film that most people you talk to will tell you is unimpressive but watchable enough for what it sets out to do. “Ironbark” follows the story of a businessman (Benedict Cumberbatch) and a Soviet during the Cuban missile crisis. The film is destined to come and go once released.
If any film so far this Sundance could be become a hit, it would be “Palm Springs,” a “Groundhog Day”-esque comedy starring Andy Samberg. Despite retreading the familiar time-loop trope, the film is silly but incredibly entertaining — one of the funniest movies you will likely see this year. NEON and Hulu teamed up to buy “Palm Springs” for a whopping $15 million. A summer release would be most convenient for this film, which follows a man and woman forced to continuously relive a day in their life at a friend’s wedding.
More to come …
This absolutely matters. That room was practically all Oscar voters. Fact remains, “Michael” was always going to contend for a best picture nomination, you just had to set your biases aside.