Rights to Lovelace snapped up by distributor as Sundance showcases raft of porn-inspired films

Joining the Deep Throat-inspired film are Don Juan’s Addiction, Look of Love and Kill Your Darlings at the Utah-based festival

Amanda Seyfried as Linda Lovelace

The American distribution rights to a biopic about porn star Linda Boreman aka Linda Lovelace have been bought after the film’s world premiere at Sundance Film Festival received a warm critical response.

A division of The Weinstein Company, RADiUS-TWC, attained the rights on Tuesday and is planning to release the film next Autumn.

Naturally blonde Les Miserables actress Amanda Seyfried, 27, appears in the title role of Lovelace looking markedly different with a dark mop of hair.

It is one of two recent films about the star of popular porno Deep Throat. The other, called Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story stars Malin Akerman.

Both films portray the overnight stardom Lovelace attained when Deep Throat – a psycho sexual and at times hugely comical film - became a cultural phenomenon in 1972, breaking into the mainstream in a way that no ‘blue movie’ had done before.

Directed by Robert Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Lovelace explores the star’s relationship with her husband and manager Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) with Robert Patrick and Sharon Stone playing her parents.

Lovelace has been described as “surprisingly good on several fronts” by the Hollywood Reporter and The Guardian’s critic writes that “Seyfried captures much of the real Lovelace's artless appeal”; while Screen International calls this “period piece both breezy and weighty at the same time, no easy feat.”

Sundance 2013 has showcased a raft of films and documentaries either inspired by the porn industry or examining our obsession with explicit sex on screen.

The Utah-based festival showcased Michael Winterbottom’s Look of Love about Soho’s mucky magazine and strip joint ‘King’ Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan); and in Don Jon’s Addiction Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a porn addict trying to become less selfish.

The festival also featured a talk by James Franco (who plays Hugh Hefner in Lovelace) about his two films, the semi documentary Interior.Leather.Bar about William Friedkin’s explicit 1980 film Cruisin; and Kink, about a San Francisco bondage website.

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe’s most recent performance as beat poet Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings caused a stir at Sundance last week. Radcliffe, who is straight, is shown kissing a man in one scene and making love to a sailor in another. He found himself defending the role:

“I don’t know why a gay sex scene should be any more shocking than a straight sex scene. Both of them are equally un-shocking,” he said.

Radcliffe expressed particular surprise that some people seemed more alarmed by the gay sex scenes than his previous role in the play Equus, in which he played a character who was sexually attracted to horses.

He told MTV: “What weirded me out the most last night was people were asking me all these questions about the gay sex scenes. I was like: ‘You know I did Equus?’. Some people are asking me questions like this is a more shocking subject, which is so strange.”

Ginsberg has been previously played by Franco who also collaborated with Epstein and Friedman on 2010 film Howl.

Sundance continues until 27 January.