By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
The price of Sundance love: Dargis' Sundance reality
Multi-Oscar-nommed Little Miss Sunshine and Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy were favorites of Sundance 2006; to highlight the divide, in NY Times, Manohla Dargis does the fiscal comparison-contrast. “The two films had their premiere the same day, within a half-hour of each other: Old Joy played in a 150-seat house, and Little Miss Sunshine, in a packed 1,270-seat theater. People who actually saw Old Joy, a low-fi story about two friends on a weekend trip in the Oregon woods, seemed to love it, but, like many Sundance films, it left the festival without a buyer.” Later, “it was picked up by the small New York distributor Kino International for what Gary Palmucci, the head of its theatrical sales, called the “low five figures.” Film Forum in New York, a key house for movies like this, was offered only the fall-prestige slot of 20 September. Old Joy “did spectacularly well at Film Forum, bringing in more than $29,000 the first week. It earned more than $21,000 the second week, but by then was competing with new studio-division arrivals… Mr. Palmucci estimated that by the end of its nearly six-month theatrical run Old Joy will have played in almost every major market in the country. Kino can’t afford to buy full-page ads in big-city newspapers but did run a few small ones. It also spent about $40,000 to blow the film up from 16mm to 35mm; $24,000 on 22 prints; $6,500 on 200 trailers; $4,000 on 50,000 postcards and about $3,000 on Web advertisements. Kino also bought posters and radio spots, and hired outside publicists. It has been a heroic effort, but the postcards, the trailers and all the glowing reviews have not been enough to make the film a hit for the distributor. As I write, Old Joy has pulled in less than $200,000.” The theatrical gross for LMS? Boxofficemojo.com says the recent DVD release earned $59,599,618.