Little Miss Sunshine premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 20 January 2006.
Michael Arndt sold his script in 2001 and Focus Features was interested but wanted the focus of the film to concentrate on Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear). Arndt disagreed and was fired. After changes at Focus, Arndt was rehired and the film went into pre-production before being dropped in 2004. Producer Marc Turtletaub bought back the rights to the film for an estimated $400,000 and filming began in June 2005 (Arndt rewrote the ending 6 weeks before the film was scheduled to be screened at Sundance) with Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris directing (their first feature).
The day after the film's premiere, several studios placed bids to distribute it, with Fox Searchlight making one of the largest offers in Sundance's history.
Little Miss Sunshine was a commercial and critical success, earning more than $100 million at the box office (on a budget of $8 million) and receiving numerous awards and nominations, including 4 Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture and Abigail Breslin for Best Supporting Actress). It received Oscars for Best Supporting Actor (Alan Arkin) and Best Original Screenplay.
