Park City did indeed turn out to be a robust marketplace this year, with buyers snapping up over two dozen features and docs out of Sundance 2012. Ranging from genre pleasers to indie charmers to potential future Oscar picks and beyond – and veering from critical fest duds to overwhelming crowd favorites – the class of Sundance ’12 is an intriguingly mixed-but-mostly-promising bag of films that will be dotting the cinematic landscape in the year or so to come. Here’s an updated comprehensive look at what sold and which films you should be looking forward to.
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It may be a relatively quiet Sundance year – even Pixar’s Lee Unkrich, in town for the festival, Tweeted his dismay at the “mixed bag” of movies – but films are selling. Granted, they’re mostly the ones with name actors and mostly okay-to-decent reviews (with a few exceptions), but buyers continue to be getting busy in the snow. The latest batch of pick-ups (Olsens and robots and scares, oh my!) after the jump.
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A quick update on the flurry of Sundance deal-making of recent days, with well-received documentaries and less acclaimed but star-driven (read: marketable) narratives sitting pretty with distribution agreements. Will this be, as pundits predicted, a high-volume buying year in Park City?
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It's no Worst Movie EVER!, but it's close: Over the weekend the indie horror pic Creature, opening in a surprising 1,500 locations, made box office history, all right... just not the kind filmmakers were hoping for. Despite attempts to create what they described as a "new template" for indie film distribution, the folks behind Creature -- including Sid Sheinberg, former president of Universal Pictures -- instead earned a place among the worst wide-release openings of all time.
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Deadline reports a deal in progress for Lionsgate to release the Drew Goddard-directed, Joss Whedon-produced horror pic Cabin in the Woods. Filmed back in 2009 and caught up in the MGM bankruptcy fiasco, the 3-D horror thriller languished in limbo and shuffled around the release calendar numerous times in the last few years. The wait, however, could benefit from the star power of Chris Hemsworth -- Thor himself! -- who shot the film before being cast as Marvel's God of Thunder.
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Movieline hero Clint Culpepper strikes again! Sony announced today that it will distribute Joe Cornish's debut feature, the London kids vs. aliens action comedy Attack the Block, via its Screen Gems division. "The film is, at once, charming, scary, funny, hip, clever and completely hits its mark," said Screen Gems president Culpepper in a press release. Guess all that geek cred from SXSW did the film some good after all! Hit the jump for more info and a look at the film's nerdgasm-inducing trailer.
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