Sundance a seller's market

Buyers at the Sundance Film Festival have a mantra: Don't get caught up in festival fever. In other words, don't let an enthusiastic reception here seduce you into paying a lot of money for a film that won't play anywhere else. A second caveat might be in order: Don't shop on an empty stomach. You'll come home with more than you want or need.

This year, many observers believe, one or both of these injunctions have been violated. They say that Miramax/Fox Searchlight spent too much ($5 million) on Zach Braff's "Garden State," a romantic comedy that one critic described as "overly sedated"; that Fox Searchlight lavished too much money (estimates range between $3 million and $4.75 million) on Jared Hess' "Napoleon Dynamite," a film about an adolescent nerd in rural Idaho that many have described as funny but slight; and that Focus Features overpaid ($4 million) for Walter Salles' "The Motorcycle Diaries," a Spanish-language film about the on-the-road education of the revolutionary Che Guevara.

"The numbers are very high, as high as the mountains of Utah," says Think Film's Mark Urman.

"Some of the numbers seem a little aggressive," says Tom Ortenberg, whose company, Lions Gate, purchased the thriller "Open Water" for $2.5 million. Last year, a festival favorite such as "The Station Agent" went for $1.5 million. "Thirteen," another hot title, went for $2 million.

The rise in prices being paid for films this year is attributable to very poor markets at Cannes and Toronto, according to Ortenberg, a view that is shared by many buyers here. By the time many distributors showed up at Sundance, the cupboard was bare, so there was pressure to shop aggressively. This pressure was exacerbated by what some see as front-loading at this year's festival: The most eagerly anticipated films were shown early. (Arguably the most difficult film in competition, "The Woodsman," a sympathetic look at a pedophile, was shown last.)

Ortenberg says he put together an offer for "Open Water" after the first screening with the understanding that the filmmakers had until the second screening the next day to accept it -- which they did. So the film was sold before some distributors had a chance to see it. Front-loading and the kind of deal-making that goes with it also have the effect of freezing out the press and word of mouth, so that early reviews and views that could hurt a film's marketability don't have time to surface.