Vortex Pictures, the newlyformed financing and sales outfit run by Nicolas Chartier and Dean Shapiro, hasacquired three more films for international sales including NicolasCage's directorial debutSonny.

The company is at Sundanceand Slamdance later this week with 13 Moons, the latest film from director Alexandre Rockwell,which opens the Slamdance Film Festival, and The Man From Elysian Fields directed by George Hickenlooper, which screens inthe Premiere section at the Sundance Film Festival.

All three pictures areproduced by LA-based Gold Circle Films, the prolific independent founded byGateways Computer co-founder Norm Waitt and run by British producer andentrepreneur Paul Brooks. Vortex has a close relationship with Gold Circle andrepresents previous titles such as My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Bad Boyand Wishcraft.

Sonny, which started principal photography yesterday inNew Orleans, sees Cage behind the camera for the first time. It stars JamesFranco - who memorably played James Dean on a recent TV movie -heads the cast as a male hustler struggling to get a proper job but hindered byhis flesh-peddling mother (played by Brenda Blethyn) who wants him back.Co-starring are Mena Suvari, Harry Dean Stanton, Scott Caan and Cage himself.Footage from the film, which Vortex describes in the vein of Leaving Las Vegasand American Gigolo, will be available at AFM.

The Man From ElysianFields - previouslyrepresented by Shoreline Entertainment - world premiered at the TorontoFilm Festival last year. It stars Andy Garcia, Mick Jagger, Julianne Margulies,James Coburn and Anjelica Huston and features Garcia as a failed novelist whois persuaded to join a male escort service.

13 Moons marks the first film by Rockwell, who won theSundance Film Festival grand jury prize with In The Soup in 1992, since Louis & Frank in 1998. The film stars Steve Buscemi, PeterStormare, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Sam Rockwell and Jennifer Beals in the story ofa night of madness when 13 moons fill the sky and an odd assortment of completestrangers are independently brought together by their sudden need for one bailbondsman.