'Little' films become huge hits

The slacker comedy "Napoleon Dynamite" cost local filmmaker Jared Hess and his producers $400,000 to make, less than the catering bills for many major Hollywood studio productions.

Hess' "Little Hit That Could" made $44 million in its theatrical release and grossed many times that in its subsequent DVD and home-video releases, as well as other merchandizing.

And despite featuring a couple recognizable names in its cast (including Greg Kinnear and Steve Carell), the 2006 ensemble comedy "Little Miss Sunshine" cost a "mere" $8 million to make. It went on to make $60 million.

However, neither of those hits compares to the runaway success of "The Blair Witch Project." The $60,000 production scared up $141 million in business in the United States alone.

The connection between these three hits is that they debuted at the Sundance Film Festival — in 2004, 2006 and 1999, respectively. Sundance is where each of them was discovered.

Hess still credits the festival with jump-starting his career, calling it "the place to be discovered if you're a filmmaker, especially a first-timer."

But getting into Sundance doesn't automatically guarantee a film's success. And neither does making a major splash there.

"The Spitfire Grill" won the Audience Award for most popular dramatic feature at the 1996 festival. When it was released theatrically, the film barely made a ripple at the box office.

The same thing happened to the 1999 comedy "Happy, Texas." That movie was considered to be the big acquisition for Miramax Films at the festival that year, but its theatrical stay was brief, at best.

And recent Sundance horror selections "Wolf Creek" (2005) and "Fido" (2006) had hoped to re-create some of "Blair Witch Project's" box-office magic, or failing that, the performance of 2003's "28 Days Later." "Fido" was in and out of theaters so fast that many in the industry thought it went straight to video.

While that might concern studios that are looking to acquire films at Sundance, it doesn't faze festival director Geoffrey Gilmore. He insists that the festival exists as a forum for filmmakers, not as a market for studios looking for the "Next Big Thing."

"Our responsibility as programmers is to look at everything that's submitted and choose the best of it," Gilmore said. "We don't necessarily look for films that are going to be hits. Quality and commercial appeal aren't always the same thing."