Eric Lavallée

After James Franco picked up Stephen Elliott's memoir The Adderall Diaries for a screen adaptation, somewhere along the way the author got to go behind the camera and cast Franco along with Heather Graham, Lili Taylor and Dev Patel in Cherry, an indie pic about the porn biz that was shot last May. Fest programmers are already warm to Franco's work, and if they take kindly to the film then a little sizzle might go a long way in the crisp month of January. A Premieres showing seems likely.

Lee Toland Krieger made his Sundance debut with the drama The Vicious Kind back in 2009, and we think this rom com Black List script mentioned screenplay by thesps Rashida Jones and Will McCormack has a good chance at nabbing a Premieres showing. Celeste and Jesse Forever features a parka friendly ensemble of Elijah Wood, Eric Christian Olsen, Ari Graynor, Friends with Benefits & I Love You, Man co-stars Jones and Andy Samberg along with Park City staple Emma Roberts in the lead.

In my books, among best films to have been shown at last year's edition was Matt Piedmont's award winning Brick Novax's Diary (parts I & II). Casa de mi Padre - Piedmont's feature film debut as been a lock for a while now (see trailer), my thinking is this knee-slapper with subtitles is looking for the most ideal fest to tickle audiences and get a distributor to budge and pick up this oddball concept of a film that will play better as an indie film than a studio pic. Alumni Park City members Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal star alongside the Funny or Die folk.

Sundance tends to add films to their line-up that have a musical element -- it could allow for a film like California Solo, a drama toplined by Robert Carlyle to make the cut. Produced by Mynette Louie (Children of Invention), Marshall Lewy's sophomore pic could crack the U.S Dramatic Comp or Premieres category line-up.

Described by Jamie Babbit as a "genre-trashy fun; gratuitous girl-on-girl make-out scenes and three-inch heels", Breaking the Girl which is based on a screenplay by Mark Distefano and American Psycho's Guinevere Turner stars indie actors Madeline Zima, Shawn Ashmore and Agnes Bruckner. Having presented a pair of short films almost a decade back (her 2002 short “Stuck,” was a winner of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival's Special Mention Jury Prize), Babbit's (middle person in random set pic above) latest would be a good fit for a Park City at Midnight showing.