Next week, the Sundance Film Festival will release about 100+ titles that are the make up of their upcoming edition and this can only mean one thing: this past week was the official nail-biting, living next to the phone type of deal for several first time filmmakers.
We often hear about the Sundance Labs for screenwriters and directors, but don't worry folks, producers aren't being neglected, in fact the Sundance Institute have a pretty good initiative for the next generation of producers. The Sundance Institute announced a series of initiatives designed to support independent producers in feature film and documentary.
The French sales/production company is supplying this year's Cannes fest with a trio of titles, but you might find me doing cartwheels more for a project that hasn't even began lensing in Marjane Satrapi's Waiting for Azrael.
The buyers at Summit Entertainment must be fans of the annual Black List of the Best in Unproduced screenplays as they have just added their third in a little less than half a year. After picking up the top of 2008's list in The Beaver (at the very beginning of production) and setting up shop for Duncan Jones' forthcoming Source Code (a 2007 top 20 spec), the indie distributor which was able to bankroll of three projects due to the Twilight films has bought the North American rights to the (currently in pre-production) film once going by the excellent title of I'm with Cancer.
This February we are keeping tabs on So Yong Kim, Tom McCarthy and Dito Montiel who are all filming their third films which happen to all be set in the state of New York. Outside of the U.S, I'm with Cancer sets up shop in Vancouver, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod will lense the adaptation of Guy De Maupassant's classic novel's Bel Ami which will film in Budapest, and finally Ana Katz will film Los Marziano in her native Argentina.