The Sundance Film Festival is going all in again with a hybrid model for 2022. I just got email confirmation from their press office that “all 80 official feature film selections will play both in person and online”.
In-person screenings will be held in Park City. As always, films will premiere in the opening half of the Festival, which next year will be held from Thursday, January 20, through Tuesday, January 25, 2022, with additional screenings to follow through the end of the Festival.
Online premieres will follow the in-person premieres, using the custom-built online platform that was home to last year’s festival.
Basically, six days of world premieres.
I’m sure COVID put a stop to a lot of indie productions that couldn’t afford mass testing their crew/actors, so the amount of quality films available to screen will be similar or slightly better to this past January’s lineup.
Will this be a regular thing going forward? Sundance seems to be embracing the digital era. Also, worth pondering, if every film screen in Park City will be available digitally then A24 will be very nervous about bringing their stuff to the festival — then again, they might have no choice.
A24 has been a prime fixture of Sundance the last decade and their 2022 lineup will be stacked with noteworthy films:
“The Eternal Daughter” (Joanna Hogg)
”Disappointment BLVD.” (Ari Aster)
”Men” (Alex Garland)
“Showing Up” (Kelly Reichardt)
”The Sky is Everywhere” (Josephine Decker)
”The Whale” (Darren Aronofsky)
“Everything Everywhere All At Once” (The Daniels)
”Red, White and Water” (Lily Neugebauer)
“After Yang” (Kogonoda)
”Pleasure” (Ninja Thunberg)
How many of these will show up?
Paul Greengrass’ "The Uprising," starring Andrew Garfield, opened to $3.2M from 2,068 theaters this weekend. Yikes. The budget hasn’t been disclosed, but is said to be in the $20-$30M range.