The Wall Street Journal-20080123-Comic -Hamlet 2- Finally Gets Sales Going at Sundance
Return to: The_Wall_Street_Journal-20080123
Comic 'Hamlet 2' Finally Gets Sales Going at Sundance
After a slow start, the Sundance Film Festival picked up speed yesterday as Focus Features snagged the comedy "Hamlet 2" for a near record $10 million in an all-night bidding war.
The opening weekend of the annual Park City, Utah, cinema showcase had mile-long traffic jams, packed theaters and even some snow, but very few films emerged with distribution deals.
Then around 7 a.m. yesterday, Focus Features, a unit of General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal, picked up "Hamlet 2" following a protracted bidding war involving Fox Searchlight, Weinstein Co., Lionsgate, Picturehouse, Miramax, Summit Entertainment and Warner Independent Pictures.
The deal, brokered by the Creative Artists Agency, is shy of the record set by "Little Miss Sunshine," which sold for $10.5 million in 2006. Although many film distributors believe the market is overheated, the sale of "Hamlet 2" suggests a growing interest in independent films that are lighter and more youth-oriented. Another film about life inside a high school, the evocative documentary "American Teen," has also stirred a lot of interest among buyers.
"Hamlet 2," which stars Steve Coogan as a failed actor turned high- school drama teacher, tells the quirky tale of a class that stages a sequel to "Hamlet." "Hamlet 2" was executive produced by Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, who produced "Little Miss Sunshine," and it cost a little more than $9 million to make.
Bidding began immediately after the film screened at 5:30 Monday night to a sold-out theater of 450 people. Agents from CAA each received as many as 30 calls within the hour along with a flurry of emails.
The bidding war was fueled in part by the enthusiastic reaction from the crowd at the film's screening. After the premiere, every major distributor huddled outside the Library Center Theater, working up strategies for acquiring the film. CAA barred bidders from its sales condo unless they had solid offers on the table. Focus emerged as the leading bidder around 3 a.m.
Focus's chief executive, James Schamus, who has not bought a film at Sundance since 2005 when he purchased "Brick," says that his company prefers to make its own films: "We don't have the appetite for acquisitions that our peers do."
But "Hamlet 2" is an exception, Mr. Schamus says. "When our senior team walked out of that screening, every single one of them believed that it was a film that we needed to have."
"Hamlet 2" was among the Sundance films on which buyers had staked high hopes. But many of those films -- including "The Wackness," with Mary-Kate Olsen, "Sunshine Cleaning," with Amy Adams, and "What Just Happened?" with Robert De Niro -- disappointed buyers and failed to sell immediately.
Tom Bernard, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, says that because "Hamlet 2" is a "light youth-oriented comedy," its commercial prospects are strong. He also noted that some of the serious films from last year's festival performed poorly at the box office. For example, "Grace Is Gone," for which Weinstein Co. paid about $4 million last year, brought in only slightly more than $36,000 at the U.S. box office, though the film was showing in limited release for award consideration and will be re-released at the end of January. "People don't want to get burned twice, so they go for something different," Mr. Bernard says.
"Hamlet 2" was a late addition to the Sundance schedule, in part because it was put together so quickly. Eric Eisner, a producer of the film and son of Michael Eisner, former CEO of Walt Disney Co., secured the script shortly after last year's Sundance. The film was then shot in six weeks, but it didn't wrap until the end of October. Eric Eisner persuaded Geoffrey Gilmore, the director of Sundance, to look at a rough cut of the movie.
Mr. Eisner says that once the film was accepted, editing and post- production continued right up until the last minute. The movie was locked up on Friday -- just three days before the film's screening.
The success of the film, Mr. Eisner says, lies in the way it "blends elements of highbrow and lowbrow." He describes it as a parody of all those inspirational teacher films" such as "Dangerous Minds" and "Dead Poets Society," both of which are referenced numerous times in the film.
The only major film to sell over the weekend was "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired," a sympathetic portrayal of the Oscar-winning director and his legal trials. HBO bought the domestic rights while Weinstein Co. purchased most international rights for a figure estimated at $200,000 to $400,000.
Yesterday, two other films sparked some interest. Fox Searchlight acquired the world rights to "Choke," adapted from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, for about $5 million. The film, the directorial debut of Clark Gregg, tracks the story of a sex-addicted son (Sam Rockwell) and his relationship with his mother (Anjelica Huston). Overture Films purchased the U.S. rights to the comedic drama "Henry Poole Is Here" for about $3.5 million.
---
Anthony Kaufman contributed to this article.
