Indie world isn't for faint of heart

JUST hours after "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" had its debut screening at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, the movie's makers were sitting on top of the independent film mountain. In an all-night negotiating session following "Mandy Lane's" first showing, Harvey Weinstein purchased the low-budget teen thriller for $3.5 million, promising to release it on at least 800 screens.

But like the underage victims in the film, "Mandy Lane" immediately went missing.

Nearly a year after its Toronto debut, the movie hasn't reached theaters. But what would have been essentially a direct-to-video release was averted at the last minute, and the film now is scheduled to arrive at the multiplex in early 2008. Though it won the brief but spirited bidding war, the Weinstein Co. no longer owns the film's U.S. rights, having sold them to a new German-backed distribution company.

The rise, fall and potential resurrection of "Mandy Lane" offers a primer on the wild swings of independent filmmaking, in which you can be a film festival favorite one day, the victim of a poor test screening the next, and then wake up in the hands of a new, untested distributor.

The final chapter in "Mandy Lane's" up-and-down story hasn't yet been written. Early next year, the film is scheduled to be the first theatrical release of Senator Entertainment US, a newly formed production and distribution entity affiliated with Germany's Senator Entertainment AG, which promises to give the film the support the Weinstein Co. wouldn't.

Marco Weber, president and chief executive of the new American division, says he will release "Mandy Lane" on as many as 1,200 screens.

"I am incredibly impressed by this film," Weber says. "I feel like it represents a new generation of teen horror movies."

When "Mandy Lane" was shown at last year's Toronto festival, many also held Weber's positive assessment. Immediately after its midnight debut, producers Occupant Films and its CAA sales agents were approached by several bidders.

Weinstein bargained till dawn, successfully acquiring the film's worldwide rights while beating out Focus Features and MTV Films.

It was a stunning coming-out for Occupant, a partnership of three recent graduates of USC's Peter Stark film producing program. Soon after leaving school, Keith Calder, Felipe Marino and Joe Neurauter assembled a business plan to produce low-budget genre films, which would be financed by outside investors and then sold to various distributors.