Not even a shot of Botox under the arm will curb a certain kind of nervous sweat for buyers and sellers headed to this year’s Marché du Film. A continued pattern of caution will reign when it comes to deals at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, numerous industry insiders told TheWrap.
Festival titles have been selling at a snail’s pace since last September’s Toronto International Film Festival, despite the widely held industry line that we live in an aggressive buyers market. And while the Marché always brings a smattering of diverse international fare and typically produces an awards player or two, the impulse-buying phenomenon that one top studio executive called “festival fever” has cooled considerably.
“There are challenges in the independent marketplace that are well-documented in terms of the economic model and the pipeline of films,” said Stuart Ford, former head of IM Global, who returns to France with his new content and sales engine, AGC Studios.
“I don’t expect Cannes to signal any great deviation from the trajectory we’ve been on, but true premium projects will be more in demand … the appetite and the volume of business for smaller indies is just changing.”
One studio executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, added, “A few years ago, people were really overspending and then taking a bath when they released the films.” Another notable dealmaker who declined to be named said that interest in finished films at Cannes, even competition titles, is unusually low.
“People are so apprehensive,” said Alex Walton of Bloom, an international sales, production and financing company (“The Nice Guys,” “Suburbicon”). But Walton cautioned against sounding any death knells, thinking back to his time at Paramount’s defunct indie label, Vantage.
“I think our top movie one year made $12 million at the box office,” he said. “Compared to now? This is a heyday. The market will liven up with continued success stories, like ‘Hostiles’ making $30 million or ‘Chappaquiddick’ getting to around $12 million. Or look at ‘Lady Bird’ and ‘The Shape of Water.'” (“Lady Bird” grossed $49 million, while Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar winner hit nearly $64 million.)
Here’s what we’ll be watching for as the market unfolds on the Croisette:
1. INTERRUPTED STREAMS
It’s been two years since streaming giants Netflix and Amazon stormed the indie market at Sundance, acquiring titles by the bucket and inflating price tags by millions. The companies both launched fireworks displays to announce their arrival and drove a money train that almost immediately stalled. Both companies pivoted to original productions, which the services could own outright as library titles and use to keep their global pipelines full of content. At the Marché this year, expect both to pack light.
Netflix has already given us the first beef of Cannes by refusing to submit its films to any section of the festival. The move was in direct response to a rule change that all eligible competition films must have a theatrical run in France, a move that found festival boss Thierry Frémaux placating France’s domestic exhibition business, which was in full revolt over Netflix’s day-and-date theatrical release strategy.
But if Netflix won’t send films, it will send acquisitions reps to the festival for some window shopping. “Netflix is more likely than anyone to be prolific,” said Bloom. “They need more foreign product than anyone else.”
Amazon is in a different situation. Jeff Bezos’ studio is still “in flux” after installing former NBC chief Jen Salke to replace the disgraced Roy Price, one studio executive said. “They’re not looking to be major players–their strategy has moved to bigger films. They might be looking for awards but they’re after the next ‘Big Sick,’ not a Todd Solondz movie.”
Both “The Big Sick” and Solondz’s last film, “Weiner-Dog,” were released by Amazon Studios. “The Big Sick” earned an Academy Award nomination and $43 million domestic. “Wiener-Dog” took in less than $500,000 in limited release.
2. LE PAQUET
One pocket of the sales market sure to see movement are content packages with movie stars attached — deals where agencies will bring scripts and big names to market and raise millions in domestic and international sales to finance production.
Long before distributor Neon and content sales company 30West bought “I, Tonya” for $6 million out of Toronto, for example, the Margot Robbie-starring, Oscar-nominated film raised millions in France to get it onto the ice. (The film grossed $30 million domestically.) And last year, the stop-motion film “Bubbles,” about Michael Jackson’s beloved chimp, kicked off a heated bidding war eventually won by Netflix for what was reported to be a staggering $20 million. Action fare like Chris Evans’ “Red Sea Diving Resort” also fetched big money.
“We’re taking two behemoth projects with big names,” Ford said. Though he couldn’t disclose attachments, he targeted the budgets at around $100 million each. “There’s a certain tier of films that even a couple of years ago would have seen studio production,” he added. “It reflects the reality that studios are making fewer movies.”
3. MINI-MAJORS AND MAJOR PRIZES
One thing our insiders unanimously agreed on was the plum position of the mini-major–specialty labels at the big studios who get to flex creative muscle without having to perform big for the C-suite executives. Sony Pictures Classics, Focus Features and Disney’s soon-to-be-acquired gem Fox Searchlight are all coming with money to spend, numerous individuals familiar with their plans told TheWrap.
There are also decisive and well-financed operations like A24, The Orchard and Magnolia, which will be on the prowl for awards season entries across features and documentaries. Last year, The Orchard took Robin Campillo’s “BPM,” which won the César (France’s Oscar) though it fell short of an Oscar Best Foreign Language Film nomination. SPC took Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Loveless,” which made the Oscar cut but didn’t win.
For the record, a previous version of this story had an incorrect purchase price for theatrical rights to “I, Tonya.”
19 Cannes Movies We're Dying to See, From 'BlacKkKlansman' to 'Solo' (Photos)
The 2018 Cannes Film Festival will showcase 21 films in competition, another 16 out of competition, 18 in Un Certain Regard, more than two dozen in Cannes Classics and others in the independent Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week sections. Among the riches, here are some that stand out.
“BlacKkKlansman” Spike Lee (Main Competition) The director who some think was robbed of the Palme d’Or for “Do the Right Thing” in 1989 is back in the running with the true story of a black man who infiltrated the KKK in the '70s – but advance footage shows a comic tone, and producer Jason Blum says the goal was “to show what bozos” the Klan is.
“Three Faces” Jafar Panahi (Main Competition) Panahi, who is not allowed to leave Iran and is officially forbidden from making movies, has nonetheless spent the last few years creating a string of wry, smart films about life under totalitarian rule, peaking with “Taxi” in 2015. Any new Panahi film is an event, and his first to land in the main competition in Cannes has already made him the betting favorite for the Palme d’Or.
“The House That Jack Built” Lars von Trier (Out of competition) Matt Dillon as a serial killer over a span of 12 years is intriguing enough. But Lars von Trier returning to the festival that declared him “persona non grata” for his press-conference comments about Hitler in 2011 — that’s a riveting story all its own.
“The Image Book” Jean-Luc Godard (Main Competition) We know the director probably won’t show up, and we know his film will be challenging and elusive. “The Image Book” is reportedly an essay about film that comes exactly 50 years after a politicized Godard helped shut down the 1968 Cannes festival in solidarity with protests throughout France.
“Whitney” Kevin Macdonald (Midnight Screenings) The director of fact-based narrative films (“The Last King of Scotland”) and documentaries (“One Day in September”) turns his sights to the glorious art and tragic life of Whitney Houston for one of a small number of documentaries in the Cannes lineup.
“Yomeddine” A.B. Shawky (Main Competition) The last time a director’s debut feature was chosen for Cannes’ main competition was 2015, when Laszlo Nemes’ “Son of Saul” made the cut and ended up winning Cannes’ Grand Prize and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Hoping to follow that daunting path: Shawky’s crowd-funded coming-of-age drama about a young man leaving the leper colony where he was left as a child.
“Cold War” Pawel Pawlikowski (Main Competition) Pawlikowski’s last film, “Ida,” won the foreign-language Oscar, and stills from this film have the same gorgeous black-and-white look and disconcerting, nearly square aspect ratio. It’s a romance set in post-World War II Europe.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” Ron Howard (Out of Competition) No, it has almost nothing to do with the kind of films that are the heart of this festival. But c’mon, who doesn’t want to see this?
“Girls of the Sun” Eva Husson (Main Competition) Golshifteh Farahani, last seen in Cannes with Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson,” plays the head of a Kurdish female battalion, and past Cannes best-actress winner Emmanuelle Bercot is an embedded journalist in the Cannes debut from “Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)” director Husson.
“2001: A Space Odyssey” Stanley Kubrick (Cannes Classics) It may be a 50-year-old movie we’ve all seen many times before, but Christopher Nolan’s presentation of this “unrestored” 70mm print will be looking to prove that a classic film can find a new way to resonate half a century later.
“Burning” Lee Chang-dong (Main Competition) Lee Chang-dong’s films “Poetry” and “Secret Sunshine” both won awards at Cannes, which puts the pressure on for this mystery based on a story by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. It’s the first film in eight years for the Korean auteur.
“Under the Silver Lake” David Robert Mitchell (Main Competition) Mitchell landed in the Critics’ Week section with his last film, the widely praised horror flick “It Follows,” and this time he’s crafted a film noir drama that finds Andrew Garfield searching for a missing neighbor (Riley Keough) through the underbelly of Los Angeles.
“Fugue” Agnieszka Smoczynska (Critics’ Week) Smoczynska’s first film, “The Lure,” transplanted “The Little Mermaid” to a Polish metal nightclub; her next one, “Deranged,” will be a sci-fi opera set to David Bowie music. In between she made “Fugue,” about a woman who has lost her memory, and how could it not be intriguing?
“Climax” Gaspar Noe (Directors’ Fortnight) In a rich year for provocateurs (Godard, von Trier … ), Argentinian director Noe might be the most provocative of all, typically stirring up adulation and outrage in equal measure. And given his penchant for forthright sexuality and hallucinatory imagery, a Noe film titled “Climax” is bound to cause a stir.
“Pope Francis – A Man of His Word” Wim Wenders (Special Screenings) The title sounds too reverential, maybe even boring. But Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or for “Paris, Texas” more than 30 years ago, is a probing and sensitive director who aimed to make a film with the pontiff, not about him.
“Arctic” Joe Penna (Midnight Screenings) You might know the Brazilian director as YouTube’s MysteryGuitarMan, but he’s making his feature debut with an icebound adventure story that star Mads Mikkelsen called the toughest shoot he’s ever been on.
“Rafiki” Wanuri Kahiu (Un Certain Regard) A couple of weeks after Kahiu’s film became the first Kenyan movie to land a Cannes premiere, it was banned in its home country because of the lesbian relationship it depicts. The ban ought to make it even more of a must-see.
“Dead Souls” Wang Bing (Special Screenings) To borrow a phrase from Eugene O’Neill and from a Bi Gan film playing in Un Certain Regard this year, this one is a real long day’s journey into night. Chinese director Wang Bing is known for his epic-length documentaries, and Dead Souls is an 8-hour-and-15-minute exploration of China’s Cultural Revolution, more than double the length of anything else in the official selection.
“The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” Terry Gilliam (Closing night) A strife-ridden 19 years in the making, this may well be the most troubled film production in history -- and more of a must-see than any recent closing-night film, assuming its screening isn’t killed by a lawsuit.
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This year’s festival will bring controversial films, auteurs at the top of their game and at least one mega-blockbuster to the Croisette
The 2018 Cannes Film Festival will showcase 21 films in competition, another 16 out of competition, 18 in Un Certain Regard, more than two dozen in Cannes Classics and others in the independent Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week sections. Among the riches, here are some that stand out.
