As distributors prepare to fall in love in dark rooms beginning tonight at the Sundance Film Festival, here are some sobering statistics. Below is a chart of how well the 2015 Sundance acquisitions did theatrically. Some of the films made money in multiplatform schemes, but here is the theatrical component. If a film…

One of the big hits out of the 2015 Sundance Film Festival was unquestionably Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Me And Earl And The Dying Girl  which not only took the top prize but also was picked up by Fox Searchlight which released the picture in June. As I said in my review of the film this was not a teen movie , but rather a…

Jesse Andrews, author of Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, is going to make his directing debut on Empress Of Serenity, and he has Trainwreck‘s Bill Hader set to star. Pic is a comedy that has taken root at Good Universe. Andrews wrote the script, which is loosely inspired by David Foster Wallace’s novel. It’s an edgy…

Rising young actor RJ Cyler, who played Earl in indie darling Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, is the first regular cast in the hourlong Showtime dark comedy pilot I’m Dying Up Here. This marks the first series regular role for the 20-year-old who is on a peculiar streak, landing his career breaks on projects with…

Now that the "official" film-awards season seems to start the minute the previous year's best picture Oscar acceptance speech ends, voters (and awards watchers) can't afford to wait until the fall to start seriously evaluating the year's offerings. While most eyes are on the Emmys and the July 16 nomination announcemen…

11th UPDATE, Monday, 3:36 PM: Jurassic World took the world’s stage for a global bow of $524.4M and 40% of that came from North American audiences. The Colin Treverrow-helmed family film accounted for 70% of the weekend’s gross among titles from the majors and lifted the box office up overall year-to-date from where…

The Sundance Film Festival’s two top U.S. competition winners launched their theatrical runs this weekend, with documentary winner The Wolfpack boasting a robust per-theater-average among specialty newcomers, the second-highest for a non-fiction movie in 2015. Sundance’s U.S. dramatic grand jury prize and audience…

There’s a good reason Me And Earl And The Dying Girl won both the Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Features and the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It is a movie that both critics and audiences should be able to agree is very special. And as I say in my video review above, it might look like a…

The big U.S. winners at this year’s Sundance Film Festival will go head-to-head with Universal’s Jurassic World this weekend in theaters. There is no doubt who will win, but both Fox Searchlight’s Me And Earl And The Dying Girl and Magnolia Pictures’ The Wolfpack appear to have a good amount of momentum to carve out a…

Fox Searchlight has already set a June 12 release date for Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, its big Sundance acquisition back in January, and now has dropped its trailer for the first wide look at the Alfonso Gomez-Rejon-directed drama that took Park City by storm winning the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for…

UPDATE, 10:15 AM: Fox Searchlight has moved up the release date of Me And Earl And The Dying Girl to a June 12 limited bow. PREVIOUS, FEBRUARY 24 PM: Fox Searchlight will release its big Sundance Film Festival acquisition Me And Earl And The Dying Girl on July 1 on a limited platform basis, the studio just announced…

UPDATED with details and quotes: The Sundance Film Festival awards ceremony tonight in Park City saw a dramatic dual decision and strong political voices to put a cap on a hot-deals festival. Like last year, when Whiplash took both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award on its way to an Best Picture…