It’s been only four days so far, but already the distribution rights to a movie have been negotiated at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
The lucky winners of the “first Sundance get” award are Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes, screenwriter Chris Sparling, and producers Peter Safran and Adrian Guerra whose Buried made its world premiere during the “Park City at Midnight” series on Saturday. The film stars Ryan Reynolds as an unlucky contract driver in Iraq whose convoy gets attacked by insurgents and he winds buried alive in a coffin, which appealed to Lionsgate.
According to Variety‘s insiders, the deal was done for between $3 million and $4 million, and was helped along by the fact that apparently the first screening was so packed that buyers from Fox Searchlight had to leave Sundance to go see it in Salt Lake City the next day.
As much as I love Ryan Reynolds, though, I am a bit concerned about the logistics of this movie, as anyone who watches “Mythbusters” knows that it is nearly impossible for someone who is buried alive in a coffin underground to live long enough to break free from it due to rising carbon dioxide levels inside the coffin. It doesn’t help to know that Reynolds’ character is buried with a candle in the coffin because as everyone knows, fire needs oxygen in order to sustain itself, thus rapidly depleting the available supply for the poor contract worker.
There’s no word yet on when the film will be released.
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