What if Sundance isn't about the sales anymore?

By Steven Zeitchik

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - One of the most promising indie films this winter features several stars and already has buyers circling. It sounds like a top Sundance Film Festival hopeful, except for one thing -- it isn't going to Sundance.

"My One and Only," a period romantic dramedy starring Renee Zellweger and Kevin Bacon, has been screening for buyers the past few weeks in the hope of sealing a deal before the first parkas are zipped up in Utah on January 15. The film, about a 1950s single mother in search of a wealthy suitor, is classic Sundance bait, but filmmakers and reps decided against taking the mid-range-budgeted film to Park City.

Instead, they believe a more deliberate rollout to buyers will serve the film's interests better than a high-profile fest screening. While they might be sacrificing the chance for a bidding war, they also avoid the possibility that the movie's value will plummet if that first screening doesn't start a fire -- in other words, if it plays like most festival movies have this past year.

"You take a movie to Sundance, there's an expectation," says a sales agent at another firm. "You're running uphill. Show a movie in L.A. and you're running downhill."

There are, to be sure, movies with the requisite big names and big promise coming to Park City this year. A Jim Carrey comedy drama ("I Love You Phillip Morris") and an Antoine Fuqua cop thriller ("Brooklyn's Finest") could easily have been studio movies, but because of plot particulars (gay themes and grittiness, respectively) became Sundance acquisition targets. Ashton Kutcher's off-kilter raunch comedy "Spread" and Kevin Spacey's drama "Shrink" also have strong prefestival hype.

If things break right, movies like these could provoke pricey bids from studios looking to avoid the creative risks -- and production costs -- of making the films themselves.

But if these titles don't ignite bidding wars -- which, given the recent state of the indie marketplace, wouldn't be surprising -- the disappointment could accelerate a shift toward the "One and Only" model.

"We're starting to screen stuff more and more outside of festivals," said attorney John Sloss, who brokers deals through his Cinetic Media firm. This in part, he says, because "I'm more unsure about the market than I've ever been."

Sloss this year opted to take James Ivory's new film to execs directly instead of taking it to Park City. Sony Pictures Classics began negotiating to acquire "Rudo y Cursi," a Spanish-language film directed by Carlos Cuaron and starring Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal, more than a week before its planned Sundance premiere.

The new attitudes are enough to cause sellers and distributors to start asking what was an unthinkable question even a few years ago: What if Sundance isn't about the sales anymore?

"There's nothing that says that Sundance has to be the Andover or Exeter for the specialty film business's Harvards and Yales," says longtime producer and sales rep Jonathan Dana.

Recent history suggests that the Ivy League of distributors is indeed looking elsewhere. There wasn't a Sundance box office hit to be found last year, and the two major sales -- "Hamlet 2," which went to Focus Features, and "Choke," which Fox Searchlight bought -- both underperformed.

In fact, there hasn't been a robust festival market by conventional definitions since Cannes in 2007 (though Toronto pickups like "The Visitor" last year and "The Wrestler" this year have provided glimmers of hope). In the meantime, many specialty divisions have either closed or cut back.

Add it all up, and many are drastically downsizing their expectations before they arrive in Park City. "There may be three or four big sales -- or there may barely be one," says one acquisitions exec. "Neither would surprise me."

The reason to expect a chillier sales climate has as much to do with production trends as it does the market itself. The indie world is already beginning to see filmmaking contract as financiers cut back amid the economic and credit crises. The prospect of lower sales returns at festival markets might shrink ambitions even further.