Despite Recession, Cannes Market Brisk

Both will be released in late 2009 or early 2010.

There was similar enthusiasm among sellers.

“We’re very excited, we’re selling out our international,” said a senior Weinstein executive, who asked not to be identified. “People are buying movies one year out, and one and a half years out. Our buyers want more product.”

Taylor said Endeavor’s 25 or so films closed between $140 and $170 million in business at the festival.

And there were hints that a couple of hedge funds – out of the game since the cataclysm on Wall Street - would be stepping back in the film financing businesss by summer, according to executives involved in those deals, which have not yet been finalized.

Most film executives said that the economic recession had been a healthy correction for the marketingplace, clearing out a lot of underbrush and excess. The deals that were left, they said, were actually more straightforward and smarter. Agents are more realistic about star salaries, the investors left in the game are more sophisticated about the business.

"Gone, for all of us, are the days when movies are made by filmmakers that don't have an audience," said Sehring. "The producers out there are a lot more realistic."

True, the major studios weren’t buying (“Dead,” was the terse email that came back from one major’s acquisitions chief), but that has already been the case for many years.

 Many competition films, including Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” and Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” already have U.S. distribution (by Weinstein and Sony Classics, respectively).

The social scene was far from dead this year too. Every night the sound of music blasted across the Croisette, from yachts in the harbor to the Vitamin Water tent on the beach. Universal put on an old-fashioned dance shebang for “Taking Woodstock,’ with a cover band playing The Who and Crosby Stills, Nash and Young to a packed house.

Anvil, the heavy metal band, put on a packed concert in a Cannes nightclub. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen still had his blowout party on his Starship Enterprise-sized yacht, where he played guitar with a cover band for his guests.

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