Notable Sundance Acquisitions

Posted by Jim on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 in Film Blogs • Film Revenue & ROI • (1) Comments • Permalink •

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Baseline Research Whitepaper on Notable Sundance Acquisitions

With the 2010 Sundance Film Festival kicking off in just over a week, on January 21st, I thought would take a look back through Baseline Intelligence's archives at some notable Sundance Film Festival acquisitions to see both the details of their acquisition at the festival and how they performed upon release. There are certainly some surprising findings.

Of all the films listed, Little Miss Sunshine was by far the most successful, taking in almost $60,000,000 at the U.S. Box office in 2006, for a $10.5 million acquisition fee. Least successful was Grace is Gone, starring John Cusack. Acquired for $4,000,000 in 2007 by The Weinstein Company, the film went on to earn only $50,080 at the box office.

Pi, made for only $80,000, was acquired for $1,000,000 by LIVE Entertainment in 1998, and went on to earn $3.2 million. Hillary Swank's Academy Award winning performance in Boys Don't Cry pushed the film to a $11.5 million take at the U.S. box office in 1999, but after a reported $5 million acquisition by Fox Searchlight on the basis of 20 minutes of unedited footage and a $4.8 million P&A spend, the movie was only just profitable.

The Aristocrats, 2005's documentary film in which 100 famous comedians reminisce, analyze, deconstruct and deliver their their own versions of world's dirtiest joke was acquired by ThinkFilm for $750,000 and with just $186,000 in P&A spend went on to earn $6.4 million in theaters. Garden State, acquired for $5,000,000 by Miramax and Fox Searchlight, went on to earn $26,781,723 in U.S. theaters in 2004 with a $16.2 million spend on prints and advertising. Waitress, acquired for $4,000,000 by Fox Searchlight went on to gross $19,067,631 in theaters, a surprise hit in 2007.

It will be exciting to see which of this year's Sundance crop will be the next Little Miss Sunshine, and which will be the next Grace is Gone. For more of this type of data, please consult Baseline Intelligence.

Best,

Jim Lukowitsch

Manager, Baseline Intelligence

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  January 27, 2010 at 03:57 PM

Thanks for the interesting and useful summary.  It would be interesting to throw into the mix the ratio of film budget to film purchase to box office gross.