Remember all those Colin Firth and Orlando Bloom sightings last summer? Well, the movie they were shooting, Main Street, just made a stop at one of the stations of the indie-film cross by being screened at the American Film Market earlier this month. The AFM is an international film bazaar in which hopeful producers show off their finished (or unfinished) films; this year, more than 8,000 buyers from around the world viewed approximately 500 films. Most films at AFM will never see the light of day, but others could become the next Paranormal Activity or Clerks or well, it’s hard to put a finger on what niche Main Street would occupy. Lil’ Abner meets The Trip to Bountiful?
It’s safe to assume that Main Street won’t be the next Reservoir Dogs or Sex, Lies and Videotape…, but as potentially the last new film made from a Horton Foote screenplay, it will definitely merit attention from film festival programmers. And if it’s good, well then it could end up in theaters.
The big announcement to wait for is from Park City, home of the Sundance Film Festival. If Sundance holds to its past form, we should know the first week of December if Main Street will play the festival (it’s entirely possible, if unlikely, that the film’s producers didn’t submit it for consideration). In fact, given the cast and the late screenwriter, who recently was the subject of a New Yorker appreciation as well as a biography by Wilborn Hampton, one would have to think that this film would have an edge on the thousands of films with minimal budgets and no-name actors that are submitted every year.
If Main Street turns up in Park City, that would give Durhamites a lot to be excited about in late January. If it doesn’t play Sundance, it could mean a number of things besides “the film wasn’t good and it was rejected,” although it could mean that, too. We’ll just have to see.
We found this poster on the Internets. It’s not, to be charitable, the most original design. In fact, some people might call it cheesy. However, it’s worth remembering the particular function of a poster used at AFM, as this evidently was. The important thing is to let potential buyers know who’s in your film and a rough idea of the genre (Driving Miss Daisy meets Pride and Prejudice meets The Lord of the Rings meets Baby the Rain Must Fall?). Click the link to see an alternate poster being used on the Web site of Myriad Pictures, the film’s producer.
