Remember when Harrison For was trying to make an ice machine in Central America? Humans vs. Nature appears to be Weir's specialty and there's nothing better than an escape film in the great outdoors (this is set in Bulgaria, Morocco and India). I'm putting my money on Weir and that this film won't bite.
Killer Film's Christine Vachon and Gus Vant Sant are making a blue chip bet that the scribe behind Milk and director on Big Love is no fluke. I don't know anything about his bio, but my understanding of the biz is when you have an original script and vet indie producers sign-up and you are joined by the DP of My Own Private Idaho and Kids, and get to play dollhouse with quality actors the chances at failure are minimized.
It may be a studio project, but my feeling is this may be closer to his indie work, than Finding Forrester. He employs Harris Savides for his specialty theme: coming-of-age films. I'll also be curious about the new batch of actors whose lineage is tied to seminal American actors (Dennis Hooper and Sissy Spacek).
If the Croisette belonged to Sony Pictures Classics and IFC Films, then Park City is where Searchlight, Focus, Apparition, Roadside, Samuel Goldwyn and Magnolia get to have a piece of the cake. If my predictions are half right, then this year's Sundance will have a unusually high number of titles with A list talent for sale.
The fascination for Michael Curtiz's Mildred Pierce continues. After Pedro Almodovar integrated parts of the film in the storyline for Volver, Todd Haynes will be making Mildred into miniseries mode and into a less straight jacket version than his homage to Douglas Sirk with Far From Heaven: meaning I'm expecting Haynes to be more faithful to the original novel written by James M. Cain than, the 1945 film.