Good 'buzz' can fizzle later

At the Sundance Film Festival, it's all about movies that generate "buzz," or good word of mouth or hype.

Last year, the nature documentary "The Emperor's Journey" charmed festival audiences and became a huge smash in its subsequent theatrical release as "March of the Penguins," grossing $77 million in the United States alone.

The thriller "Memento" was the talk of the 2000 festival, and director Christopher Nolan went on to even bigger things, capped by last year's "Batman Begins."

In 1999, the low-to-no budget horror film "The Blair Witch Project" scared up buzz from Sundance attendees and went on to become the biggest cost-to-profit hit in U.S. box-office history; the $60,000 film earned $140 million at the box office.

Then there's that little pop-culture phenomenon "Napoleon Dynamite," which took the 2004 festival by storm and six months later started on the road to earning $45 million in U.S. theaters and has become an even bigger smash on DVD.

But getting good buzz at Sundance doesn't necessarily guarantee success.

"Care of the Spitfire Grill" won an Audience Award at the 1996 festival, but in its release as simply "The Spitfire Grill," it hardly made a blip on the box-office radar. Likewise 1999's "Happy, Texas," another Sundance Audience Award-winner.

Two non-U.S. films, Stephen Chow's comical "Kung Fu Hustle" and the Australian serial-killer thriller "Wolf Creek," were hits at last year's Sundance festival, but in their theatrical releases they made a meager $17 million and $16 million, respectively.

Two award-winning documentaries, last year's "Murderball" and 2003's "Born Into Brothels," fared even worse theatrically, each barely hitting the $1 million mark (although the latter film did pick up the Academy Award for best documentary, and the former is expected to be in that race this year).

• BUZZZ! BUZZZ! Films that have already received early buzz at this year's Sundance event are obvious choices. The hotly debated cigarette-industry satire "Thank You for Smoking" set off a bidding war at the Toronto Film Festival between two studios trying to pick up its distribution rights. (Fox Searchlight won.)

"This Film is Not Yet Rated," Kirby Dick's documentary expose of the MPAA's ratings system, is another film that is generating heated discussions, as is the documentary "Crossing Arizona," which takes on the hot-button topic of illegal immigrants.