Friday night, the first one loaded with the big acquisition titles that forced distributors to scatter their teams to cover all the screenings, gave buyers buyers a lot to think about this morning. I haven’t heard of much action so far (outside of Sundance Selects’ closing a deal for The Summit, the Nick Ryan-directed pic about the attempt by 24 climbers to scale K2, with half of them dying. Just walking up Main Street here makes that an understandable outcome). Everybody’s itching for these deals to start rolling, but sellers are not being hasty. It is hard to land big buck upfront deals, and so they are being extra cautious to extract commitments from potential distributors to make sure these films get a chance to play, with all the platforms available to turn a buck. I saw Don Jon’s Addiction, the writing/directing debut of rising star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who with this film adds another dimension to what is becoming a most unpredictable and intriguing career path. For one thing, his aerobicized frame and onscreen bedroom prowess here has to put him on the short list for the lead role in Fifty Shades of Grey, if that is something he’s even interested in. Don Jon’s Addiction is funny, but Gordon-Levitt plays a buff computer porn addict who gets more gratification from logging on than from his prolific boozy bedroom encounters. Let’s just say a sponsorship from a facial tissue company seems a natural. Buyers liked the film, and the performances from Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore and Tony Danza. But the sellers want a theatrical run and distributors will need an R rating to get any serious theatrical penetration, er, I mean, bang for their buck. Aargh. You get the idea. Still waiting to get a sense of other Friday premieres like The Spectacular Now, Emanuel And The Truth About Fishes, Two Mothers, Kill Your Darlings, and Austenland.
Related: 2013 Sundance Films With Highest Wanna-See From Buyers
In the meantime, here is our annual look back at how the films of Sundance 2012 fared at the box office. These don’t include VOD revenue, so keep that in mind because it certainly gooses up the value of films like Arbitrage and Bachelorette, films that did $12 million and $8 million respectively from their multi-platform VOD runs.
2012 Sundance Domestic Box Office Scorecard
| Film | Distributor | Domestic Gross |
|---|---|---|
| The Words | CBS Films | $11,494,838 |
| Beasts of the Southern Wild | Fox Searchlight | $11,249,128 |
| Arbitrage | Roadside Attractions | $7,918,283 |
| Sessions, The (aka The Surrogate) | Fox Searchlight | $5,721,194 |
| Safety Not Guaranteed | FilmDistrict | $4,010,957 |
| Robot & Frank | Samuel Goldwyn | $3,317,468 |
| Searching for Sugar Man | Sony Pictures Classics | $3,095,075 |
| Celeste & Jesse Forever | Sony Pictures Classics | $3,089,507 |
| Queen of VersaillesSleepwalk With Me | Magnolia PicturesIFC | $2,401,999$2,266,067 |
| For a Good Time, Call… | Focus Features | $1,251,749 |
| 2 Days in New York | Magnolia Pictures | $633,210 |
| Bachelorette | Radius-TWC | $447,954 |
| Liberal Arts | IFC | $327,345 |
| Compliance | Magnolia Pictures | $319,285 |
| Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap | Indomina Media | $288,312 |
| Middle of Nowhere | AFFRM | $236,806 |
| How To Survive a Plague | IFC | $132,055 |
| V/H/S | Magnolia Pictures | $100,345 |
| 5 Broken Cameras | Kino Lorber | $75,607 |
| Red Lights | Millennium Entertainment | $52,624 |
| The Comedy | Tribeca Film | $41,113 |
| Nobody Walks | Magnolia Pictures | $25,342 |
| Lay The Favorite | Radius-TWC | $20,998 |
| Black Rock | LD Entertainment | NA |
| Shadow Dancer | ATO Pictures | NA |
| Simon Killer | IFC | NA |
| Wish You Were Here | eOne | NA |
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