With Sundance winding down over this weekend, with most of the big name and anticipated films having premiered, producers and distributors will be spending the next few days wining, dining and negotiating deals for pictures that are still up for grabs.
Newmarket Films are the latest distributor to walk away from Park City with a film canister under their arms. The company has picked up Spencer Susser’s feature length debut “Hesher.” The film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a burnout anarchist who helps a family death with loss. And while the cast is no slouch – Natalie Portman and Rainn Wilson co-star — as we noted earlier the week, the film has been met with wildly mixed (if not mostly negative) reviews.
Frankly, the fact that Newmarket Films are the ones who snagged the rights to this doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence. Their track record is uneven to say the least, and in the past few years, has been downright abysmal repping such films as “The Nines,” “Agora,” “Death Of A President,” and this year’s awful “Creation.” The seem to be adept at picking up films with stars that aren’t necessarily very good.
We’re still holding out that “Hesher” will live up to its promise, but our expectations are definitely lowered.