It won’t hurt that the 2023 Sundance Film Festival will be back in-person in Park City for the first time since 2020, but this year’s fest is swimming with potential sales titles. Starry, English-language movies and those with either big financial backing or big-name executive producers can be found not just on the competition or premieres slates, but also across the World Cinema, NEXT, and Midnight sections. What’s more, the size of the lineup still isn’t quite at pre-pandemic levels, but just about 20 percent of the 99 films premiering at this year’s Sundance have already been pre-sold.
While the theatrical landscape is dicey for any film, not just the indie ones that thrive on being crowd pleasers inside the Eccles, buyers are...