It's been a slow market at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Andrea Chalupa reports from Park City, Utah. Plagued by a bad 2007 for independent films at the box office, buyers are taking their time this week.

It's unlike last year's buying frenzy where most films were sold in the first weekend, some to the tune of a couple million, like La Misma Luna, which sold for $5 million to Fox Searchlight Pictures.

This year it's quiet but that could soon change. While waiting at one of the
many free shuttle stops lining the snow lined roads of Park City, Utah, a
man on a cell phone was talking about Sony Pictures Classic co-president,
Michael Barker, and why John Sloss of Cinetic, whose representing 18 films
at this year's festival, won't sit down with him.

Barker tried twice to meet with Sloss, and the assumption is Barker doesn't
have the money to come up with big enough offers. Word at the shuttle stop
is that Focus Features is gunning for Hamlet 2.

Hamlet 2 has received rave reviews, and could make British comedian Steve Coogan the next Will Ferrell. The story follows a failed actor turned Tucson high school teacher who pens the sequel to Shakespeare's Hamlet to save the school's drama department.

Oscar nominated actress Elizabeth Shue plays herself as a has-been actress who left Hollywood to become a nurse in a fertility clinic. Critics applauded her comedic performance and send-up of herself and Hollywood.

But keeping buyers in the dark, turning them away, is all part of the game of whipping distributors into a bidding frenzy. Even if the week started off slow, with fist-throwing Harvey Weinstein lying low, things could soon change.

Sloss, in an interview with Portfolio.com's Fred Schruers yesterday, said he isn't panicking like investors on Wall Street. He said he's holding his hand steady because distributors will always need content. And, as he has done with sleeper hits like Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine at past Sundances, Sloss has delivered, if the money is right.

At Sloss's Cinetic party last night, on the invite list were some big names in business and finance. Jon Connaughton of BAIN Capital, Gary Parr of Lazard, Chip Selig of Dune Capital, Bob Stanley of Merrill Lynch, Kevin Bell of Citigroup, Alfred Griffin of Citigroup, Peter Herzig of Crescendo Capital, John Miller of J.P. Morgan, Jared Underwood of Comerica, Thomas Adamek of Stonehenge Capital, David Gallagher of Deutsche Bank, Jeff Sine of UBS, and Marian Kongovi of Google.

Celebrities in attendance included Mathew Perry, in town promoting a family drama, Birds in America, and Saturday Night Live's Rachel Drach made a frantic swoop around the place before disappearing. And dancing to the tunes of Shout and Sinatra's New York, New York was Sundance pioneer and producer's representative Jeff Dowd, the real-life inspiration for The Dude in the Coen Brothers' Big Lebowski.

The Cinetic party was more the go-to spot for Indiewood execs, looking to get a word in with Sloss whose voice was hoarse by midnight, and he had taken to some serious nail biting of his pinking finger, possibly signaling the pressure was on for Hamlet 2.

Press agents for Cinetic have yet to confirm whether a deal has been brokered. Hopefully it's a matter of hours and not days, because with this year's sleepy Sundance, people are ready for blood.