Thanks to the domestic and international box-office success of films such as Dumb & Dumber, Ace Ventura and The Mask — all driven by the talent of Jim Carrey — and more recently in the US Happy Gilmore, Black Sheep, Mr. Wrong, Don't Be a Menace and even Grumpier Old Men, comedy is no longer a simple laughing matter but means big business for the film industry on an international scale which is reflected by many sales companies adding comedies and romantic comedies to their slates where they sit alongside the normal mix of action/adventure, drama, romance, sci-fi, and family entertainment.
Rysher, for example, have both Kingpin, with Woody Harrelson, Rand Quaid and Billy Murray, and House Arrest with Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Pollak and Jenifer Tilly on their AFM slate, while PolyGram is offering both The Associate, with Whoopi Goldberg and Dianne Wiest, and Kazaam with Shaquille O'Neal and Francis Capra. PM Entertainment are handling The Misery Brothers with Debbie Dunning; Moonstone's have The Ministry of Films Goes Around, Comes Around in pre-production; and Handmade, who have seen the potential of comedy in the past, have Intimate Relations with Julie Walters and Rupert Graves in Santa Monica for its first ever market screening.
Besides comedies and before major films from the major sales agents start turning the market rumour mill, buyers will be keeping their tabs on certain sales bets:
* Potential Cannes Players. Some front-runners at the AFM are Beyond Films' Children of the Revolution, tipped for Cannes, while CiBy Sales will be touting Mike Leigh´s Secrets and Lies, reportedly far more accessible than past outings
* Hot Berlin Tickets. Led by Film Four International's Beautiful Thing, Hettie Macdonald´s debut; Todd Solodnz´s Welcome to the Dollhouse; The Sales Company´s Persuasion, which started to sell in non English-language territories and, although it's already gone to many territories, Spanish thriller Tesis.
* Low-Budget Edgy US Indie Fare: Preferably with the cache of a Sundance outing. CiBy Sales, for instance, has Nicole Holofcener´s Walking and Talking. But distributors should move fast on that: some major territories reportedly sold straight after Sundance. And beware, at the Berlin Film Festival this year, a traditional and excellent springboard into European specialist distribution, the only Sundance film to sell substantially was Alliance International's Welcome to the Dollhouse, which clinched deals in France, Spain, the UK and Germany. But the AFM has some Berlin no-showers, such as the excellent I Shot Andy Warhol, which has the production values to travel abroad.
By staff reporters
