The chart below is a list of U.S. independent features from the 2003 Sundance Film Festival that were released theatrically in the past year.

Box office figures are as of December 21, 2003. The “Budget” estimates are just that — estimates. Culled from previously published reports, interviews with the filmmakers or, in many cases, simply our own best guesses, these numbers may not reflect the finishing costs needed to take some of these films from their festival release to your local theater. In other cases, published reports may overstate for various reasons the cost of film and, lacking other information, we’ve gone with the published number.

Asterisked films were still playing in their main theatrical runs at press time. Particularly, films like The Cooler, Station Agent and American Splendor are hoping to boost their box office with year-end awards recognition.

A “Festival” column tracks which Sundance films also played the following key international festivals: Berlin (B), Cannes (C), New York (N), New Directors/New Films (ND), Toronto (T), Rotterdam (R) and Venice (V).

As always, note that domestic box-office gross is just one indicator of a film’s overall financial performance. Also, box-office grosses are highly dependent on advertising commitments and release patterns. Some of these films garnered their dollars from a relatively small number of screens while others played much wider. Some received only perfunctory theatrical releases designed to trigger video, TV and foreign sales. And still others were films whose releases were halted after they underperformed in early key markets.

Go to: The Numbers Game: Mary Glucksman on the distribution hits and misses of the Sundance class of 2003.