Sundance Buzz: ‘Choke’, ‘Hamlet 2′ and ‘Henry Poole’ Get Bought

Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 22, 2008

For those of you who follow which movie is getting purchased by which studio throughout the Sundance Film Festival, it has been a slow week so far. I overheard some chatter last night though, that would suggest a certain level of collusion among the buyers, all holding out until later in the week in order to drive prices down. To quote one source, this is the first year that the studios “got wise about it.”

But whether it was wise or not, it has certainly helped fuel the fire for late week screenings. Today we had three major aquisitions. And they are:

Choke, based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel, was picked up by Fox Searchlight for a reported $5 million dollars/

Henry Pool is Here, starring Luke Wilson was picked up by Overture Films for a reported $3.5 million.

As well, it appears that Hamlet 2, from Nancy Drew director Andrew Fleming has been reportedly picked up by Focus Features for $10 million. Holy shit! I look forward to reviewing that one later in the week.

Stay tuned for more, as I am keeping my eye on films like The Wackness and Smart People to see when they will be picked up.

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Keep an eye on our Sundance 2008 Homepage for updates from Park City.

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