Heading into Sunday at Sundance studios and streamers were continuing to bid on Chloe Domont’s finance world psychological thriller Fair Play in what sources say could result in an eight-figure deal by the time a winner emerges.
The US Dramatic Competition entry has been the talk of the acquisitions scene since it premiered on Friday and MRC and T-Street have been taking their time mulling offers on the acclaimed feature directing debut that stars Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor as a newly engaged couple at a hedge fund.
After three days of world premieres in Park City a number of sales titles are understood to be in play. The hot talking point on Saturday night was Australian Midnight selection Talk To Me sold by Bankside.
The feature debut from Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, the brothers behind the RackaRacka YouTube channel, follows a group of teens who try to contact the dead via an embalmed hand, with terrifying consequences. As a pure genre play it was one of the more anticipated titles heading into the festival at a time when horror remains a strong prospect at the box office.
Also drawing interest is the mockumentary Theater Camp from Molly Gordon and Nick Liberman and produced by Erik Feig (last year’s hit Cha Cha Real Smooth), which earned a thunderous response at the Eccles on Saturday night and is being sold by WME Independent.
Buyers are tracking William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth follow-up and Premieres entry Eileen (also sold by WME Independent), while near universal acclaim has coalesced around Jonathan Majors’ startling lead turn as a tormented bodybuilder in Magazine Dreams in US Dramatic Competition. CAA Media Finance represents rights.
Submarine and UTA Independent Film Group are fielding strong interest on Maite Alberdi’s Alzheimer’s documentary The Eternal Memory, the Chilean filmmaker’s follow-up to her 2021 documentary Oscar nominee The Mole Agent. Meanwhile Andrew Durham’s Premieres selection and father-daughter drama Fairyland has also won fans and stars Emilia Jones and Scoot McNairy. UTA Independent Film Group represents US rights and Arclight Films handles international.
Among the fancied documentaries are Jakub Piatek’s Pianoforte about young competitors in the Chopin Piano Competition (World Cinema Documentary Competition); Beyond Utopia, which documents the plight of North Korean defectors (US Documentary Competition); and Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto’s Aum: The Cult At The End Of The World (US Documentary Competition). Submarine is selling these films and jointly represents Aum with Fifth Season.
Anticipated Sunday world premieres include Anthony Chen’s Premieres selection Drift starring Cynthia Erivo as a refugee on a Greek island who befriends a tour guide (UTA Independent Film Group and Memento International handle sales); John Carney’s musical drama Flora And Son in Premieres starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Eve Hewson (Fifth Season, WME Independent and FilmNation represent sales); and NEXT entry Young. Wild. Free. from Thembi L. Banks, an LA-set teen drama sold by UTA Independent Film Group.
On Friday Magnolia Pictures acquired worldwide rights from CNN Films to Lisa Cortés’s US Documentary Competition entry Little Richard: I Am Everything in a deal that is understood to have closed on site. Magnolia plans an April in the US and Magnolia International will launch sales at the EFM next month.
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