With the opening of the Sundance Film Festival 2013 today, the luckiest of us have a chance to get an early glimpse of this year’s must-see indie films. Every year we see pre-festival buzz for films that sometimes don’t end up being the audience favorites or award winners.  Case in point: the surprise ’10 Grand Jury winner, Winter’s Bone. But this year (maybe) seems to be a little different with films from a slew of indie darling filmmakers and even rock stars behind the camera: see Dave Grohl’s co-produced with Therapy Studios and self-directed documentary Sound City, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-directed Don Jon’s Addiction, in which he also stars, or the Moxie Pictures Produced, writers of the Twilight films, Austenland.

Why are we seeing so much more crossover of mainstream actors, filmmakers and storytellers into the indie film world? The answer is pretty obvious: the studios now seem to specialize in sequels, prequels and reboots of proven properties. Click HERE for a partial list. In a tough economy, execs aren’t interested in taking chances on innovative plots and a little-known cast as much as they want a simple box-office hit. Young talent, those looking to revamp their career in an edge way (Ashton Kutcher), those interested in the art of filmmaking, and those with a novel story to tell are all going indie. Interestingly enough, this change is causing high-profile directors and actors to overshadow many new filmmakers, actors and writers at high profile film festivals like Sundance.  Hopefully this will translate to better movies.