Buyer’s market in Park City

Two years ago, filmmakers would roll into the Sundance Film Festival confident that buyers would be willing to shell out $5 million to acquire their arty works, complete with a promise of a theatrical release.

A lot has changed since then. The economy cratered, and dozens of independent films --including Sundance alumni “Hamlet 2” and “The Wackness” -- tanked. It was inevitable that this year’s festival would be soft.

While a surprisingly large number of new works have sold at Sundance so far, the top sales prices have been dramatically lower than the largest transactions at recent gatherings. And several movies will first play not in theaters but on pay-per-view television or premium cable channels.

Typical of 2009’s Sundance transactions was the deal Magnolia Pictures struck for “Humpday,” a comedy about two college buddies testing their friendship. Magnolia didn’t pay a hefty price for the film’s domestic rights, offering only $100,000. And as part of its “Humpday” purchase, Magnolia will introduce the film first through pay-per-view outlets, then bring it to a dozen or so theaters a month later.

“I don’t really understand video on demand, but I implicitly trust them,” “Humpday” writer-producer-director Lynn Shelton says of Magnolia. “I do understand the difficulties of a theatrical release, though. It’s easy to dig yourself a hole and lose money.”

The volume of Sundance features -- 118 films, culled from an overwhelming 3,661 submissions -- makes obvious the problems facing buyers and sellers.

With so many movies competing for attention from fewer moviegoers (box office admissions were down about 5% last year), distributors are spending less money to buy Sundance movies because they know (A) it will take a lot of marketing money to create awareness in the crowded marketplace, and (B) once in theaters, their movies may not last more than a few weekends.

At the 2006 festival, Fox Searchlight spent a Sundance record $10.5 million acquiring “Little Miss Sunshine,” which went on to win two Oscars and gross more than $100 million worldwide. At this year’s festival, Fox Searchlight was smitten with “Adam,” a love story about two young people. But the sales price was a 10th of “Little Miss Sunshine’s” minimum guarantee: $1.5 million.

“It’s a really rich story, very real, and the performances are great,” says Fox Searchlight’s Peter Rice. “And it’s very funny at times. We loved it, and the audience loved it too.”

In other deals announced by Wednesday, Lionsgate paid $2 million for North American and British rights to “Winning Season,” a story of an alcoholic (Sam Rockwell) coaching a girls’ high school basketball team. Senator Entertainment bid just less than $3 million for domestic distribution to “Brooklyn’s Finest,” a dark story of police officers struggling with their own morality; Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group spent $2 million for North American rights for “Black Dynamite,” a comic spoof of 1970s exploitation movies; IFC Films grabbed the Nazi zombie scare story “Dead Snow”; and Sony Pictures Classics laid out $3 million for North and Latin American rights to “An Education,” a coming-of-age story set in 1960s London.

The United Talent Agency reported strong interest in Woody Harrelson’s “The Messenger,” while the Creative Artists Agency was fielding offers for Jim Carrey’s “I Love You Phillip Morris” and Robin Williams’ “World’s Greatest Dad.”

Not all of the movies that have sold or will sell are coming to a theater near you. Josh Braun, whose Submarine Entertainment handled the “Humpday” deal, also sold the documentary “Burma VJ,” featuring clandestine video of 2007’s uprising in Myanmar, to HBO before the festival opened.

“We thought about going to Sundance and bringing it to the open market,” Braun says. “But we found a really good deal with HBO.”

Braun’s not the only person crafting such Sundance deals.

“My guess is that we’ll see more split-rights deals,” says Andrew Herwitz, whose Film Sales Co. is selling the Sundance narratives “Adam” and “Once More With Feeling” and the documentaries “Over the Hills and Far Away” and “The Glass House.” “We’ll sell the broadcast rights to a broadcaster and then find a creative, out-of-the-box deal for the theatrical and DVD release.”

Like many Sundance shoppers, Rice says he and his Fox Searchlight team were careful to analyze how an acquisition title could (and couldn’t) be marketed. “You always have to be mindful of that,” Rice says, “but I think ‘Adam’ will play to a broad audience.”

Lionsgate decided “Winning Season” was worthy of its attention this year because the film possessed potentially broad commercial appeal.

“Given how the market is, we are just being really careful and cautious and making sure we know what our distribution plans are,” says Joe Drake, the president of Lionsgate Motion Pictures. “In ‘Winning Season,’ we found a film that has a great heart, is really feel-good with a sweet message that is really, really funny. We can target girls and their fathers and girls and their mothers.”

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group isn’t usually a big player at film festivals. But Sony said it was smitten with “Black Dynamite” in part because it saw the film as a possible franchise.

“It’s an extremely commercial movie,” says the group’s president, Steve Bersch. “It’s not an art-house movie. I think the target audience for the movie is very broad.”

While scores of Sundance filmmakers will leave Utah on Saturday without having sold their movies, those who did find distributors know how fortunate they are.

“We couldn’t be happier,” says Leslie Urdang, a producer of “Adam,” who went to Sundance knowing how tough the sales market would be. “We have the best possible outcome: closing a deal with Fox Searchlight.”

Jim Stern, who produced “An Education,” not only sold his film at Sundance but sold his documentary “Every Little Step” and the romantic comedy “Easy Virtue” at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

“It’s nice when it happens, but I am really proud of the movie,” Stern says of “An Education.” “If you have something people want to buy, they will buy it.”

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