Busy first weekend at Sundance

January 17, 2009 Sundance's annual weekend sprint through some of the indie world's hottest titles began with a bang -- actually, hundreds of them -- on Friday night as Antoine Fuqua's violent cop drama "Brooklyn's Finest" unspooled to a distributor-packed screening. Despite its dark themes, the stars of "Finest" (which include Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle and Richard Gere) and at least its trappings of a thriller (it's in fact much more of a study in police and human psychology) have made it one of the more commercially viable titles of the fest. The CAA- and WMA-co-repped film played strongly at its Eccles debut, and as of Saturday morning several distributors had put forth offers, though some also noted that backend deals for some of its stars could make it a pricey pickup.

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