This year's Sundance Film Festival will be the biggest buyer's market ever.
But will any of the movies picked up there become a breakout hit?
That's the question that hangs over Park City, Utah, as the indie film world converges on the resort for the festival, which kicks off with a quartet of opening-night films on Thursday.
Last year's festival was one of the best in memory for acquisitions -- 40 films were scooped up -- but for none of them broke through on the order of "Little Miss Sunshine." The Paul Rudd comedy "Our Idiot Brother" topped last year's entries with a $24.8 million gross.
Films like "Like Crazy," "Martha Marcy May Marlene," and "Win Win" drew favorable reviews and awards attention, but none are really in the position to receive Best Picture nominations the way recent Sundance entries "The Kids Are All Right," "Precious," "An Education" and "Winter's Bone" did a year after their debut at the festival.
Also read: Spike Lee, Stephen Frears, Julie Delpy Films to Premiere at Sundance
Buyers are trekking to Park City this week to check out movies starring the likes of Joel Edgerton, Julie Delpy and Sean Penn, plus the usual plethora of documentaries. The independent film community is hoping for another strong edition of the most important American film festival, and the key showcase for independent film anywhere.
How much a buyer's market is this year's festival? For the first time, every film premiering there did not have a buyer when Sundance booked it. Nearly every one of them still remains completely up for grabs.
This year's lineup boast more than 117 feature-length films, 45 of them by first-time filmmakers. They were selected from more than 4,000 submissions.
Also read: Sundance 2012: New Films From Jonathan Kasdan, Kirby Dick to Debut
It will kick off with a quartet of films: actor-turned-director Todd Louiso's "Hello, I Must Be Going" (right), featuring a buzzed-about performance from Melanie Lynskey; "Wish You Were Here," a Cambodian-set drama starring Joel Edgerton; "Searching for Sugar Man," a documentary about the obscure '70s rock 'n' roller Rodriguez; and Lauren Greenfield's doc "The Queen of Versailles," which stirred up controversy not because of the film but because of the Sundance press release announcing it.
Also read: Sundance Slapped with Lawsuit Over Opening-Day Documentary
The film details the construction of a 90,000-square-foot Florida mansion whose owner, David Siegel, sued Greenfield, her husband and the Sundance Institute over a description in the release that said his house had been foreclosed, which it had not. (TheWrap initially ran that description, but changed it when a Sundance rep contacted us to say that their initial wording was incorrect.)
Other competition films that have picked up attention include Behn Zeitlin's "Beasts of the Southern Wild," made with a cast of non-actors; Jonathan Kasdan's high-school drama "The First Time"; So Yong Kim's "For Ellen," with Paul Dano as a musician fighting for custody of his daughter; Ben Lewin's "The Surrogate," which stars John Hawkes as a man determined to lose his virginity even though he lives in an iron lung; and "Simon Killer," an Antonio Campos movie from the Borderline Films group that produced "Martha Marcy May Marlene."
