The Big Sleep

And so it continues? Yes, the Sundance Film Festival is once again proving a hotbed of bidding action.

The studios and their “independent” spin-offs like Paramount Classics and Fox Searchlight have been hunting the streets and haunting the cinemas at Park City looking for the next big buy that they hope will be the next big thing. And by “next big thing” we of course mean profitable.

The latest big purchase has a reliable pedigree: Michel Gondry, who last wowed us with the twisted love story of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, is back with The Science Of Sleep. Warner Independent Pictures, flush with cash from the success of March Of The Penguins, has paid $6 million for the film, a “dazzling visual fantasy” starring Gael Garc&iacutea Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg. The company’s buyers were so impressed with the film that they started negotiating immediately after a 9:30pm screening on Sunday night and closed the deal at 3am on Monday. Someone’s going to need a nap… Science Of Sleep. Nap. Get it? Oh suit yerselves…

Also celebrating were the producers of Factory Girl, the Edie Sedgwick biopic starring Sienna Miller. The Weinstein Company has snapped up a deal to distribute the film in the US, UK and several other markets. But the spoilsports refused to let on what the deal cost them.

The film tells of the ill-fated 1960s woman who was part of Andy Warhol's circle. It is set in 1965, the year Sedgwick - who died of a drug overdose in the early '70s - met Warhol.

The Weinstein gang must have been impressed by the dailies – director George Hickenlooper is still shooting the film…