Toronto's fest gives power to the people

What's THE surest sign that a movie is going to tank at the box office?

It's not that it stars Vin Diesel. Or is a remake of a Japanese TV show involving speed and racing. Or has anything at all to do with the Iraq war.

No, the best current indicator of a film's negligible prospects is whether or not it was picked up for distribution at a film festival. And that makes today's opening of the Toronto International Film Festival all the more fascinating.

Over the last few years, the Sundance, Cannes, Telluride and Toronto festivals have delivered an array of critical and commercial sensations. Sundance gave us "Little Miss Sunshine," Cannes marked the premiere of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Juno" was launched in Telluride and Toronto held the first showing of "Crash."

More recently, however, many high-profile festival sales -- particularly those emanating from Park City, Utah, the home of Sundance -- have failed to captivate multiplex audiences.

Among the movies sold at January's Sundance festival that have struggled to generate business are "American Teen" (domestic gross to date: $862,000), "Frozen River" ($813,000), "Bigger, Stronger, Faster*" ($309,000), "Transsiberian" ($919,000), "Henry Poole Is Here" ($1.6 million), "The Wackness" ($1.9 million) and "Hamlet 2" ($3.2 million).

A number of other prominent Sundance titles either have yet to come out or have not yet sold, including "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," "What Just Happened?," "Phoebe in Wonderland" and "Sunshine Cleaning."

Like any festival, Toronto has delivered its share of big acquisition duds (last year's Toronto sales included "Boy A," which sold $114,000 worth of domestic tickets, and "George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead," with receipts of $959,000), but in 2007 the festival also introduced this year's most successful specialized film release: "The Visitor."

Produced by Groundswell Productions and purchased and distributed by Overture Films, writer-director Tom McCarthy's immigration story has grossed nearly $10 million domestically. The film's performance is not only good on an absolute scale (Overture paid a little more than $1 million for the film's rights) but also on a relative one, as almost every art film has struggled at the box office this year.

"The Visitor's" success highlights one of the distinctions between Toronto and other top North American festivals.