With COVID-related production and release delays mostly in the rearview mirror, those arriving this week at the Sundance Film Festival will face another potential conundrum.
The hope among filmmakers and interested sellers is that the dual requirements of a two-tracked exhibition system — films for theaters and movies for streaming — will fuel a bull market. Fears abound that as streamers claim to restore fiscal sanity while Wall Street no longer cares about subscribers and content spends, the reckless content splurges of the past will cease to drive eyes-are-bigger-than-your-stomach purchases.
Save for Amazon’s Prime Video and Apple TV+, which arguably can still overbid, studios and streamers might be less willing to throw money at high-profile but commercially questionable titles. Concurrently, fears of an upcoming Writers Guild strike could lead to more wealth being spread around toward more movies in another variation on content-for-content’s sake spending.
Liam O’Donnell, the indie filmmaker behind the popular direct-to-DVD/VOD “Skyline” sequels, argued that “such factors usually don’t impact the biggest or the best movies. It’s the ones slightly farther down the totem pole that may be impacted.”
What’s on the auction block this year?
This year’s buzziest titles include an adaptation of Kristen Roupenian’s viral New Yorker story, “Cat Person”; the Anne Hathaway/Thomasin McKenzie 1960s women’s prison melodrama “Eileen”; the Chiwetel Ejiofor/Emilia Clarke sci-fi drama “The Pod Generation”; Ben Platt’s “Theater Camp”; and Randall Park’s directorial debut, “Shortcomings.”
Add in copious other titles up for sale, including the perennial surprises that lack big stars or source material necessary for pre-festival attention. Sight unseen, how will those titles play to a marketplace with a long history of overpaying for eventually ignored crowd-pleasers and critically acclaimed niche films?
One leading executive working both sides of the distribution business argued that the market has corrected itself. “They won’t let the prices get out of control,” said this executive. “The pace [generally] won’t be as excessive and immediate, with more conventional deal-making in days or weeks instead of hours.”
“Even as theatrical makes a comeback, commercially and in terms of prestige,” another insider noted, “traditional studios may be less willing to throw big bucks at what could be little-seen critical darlings.”
Even some of last year’s buzzier festival titles, like “Dual,” “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.,” and “Breaking,” essentially came and went — quality notwithstanding — with barely a whisper.
Big sales for buzz movies may still occur
Wildly overpriced Sundance acquisitions have been a part of the festival at least since Miramax reportedly paid $10 million for “Happy Texas” in 1999. Sundance buyers venture out every year hoping to find the next “The Big Sick,” “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Memento” but often snag the next “Hamlet 2,” “Patti Cake$” or “The Birth of a Nation.”
The streaming wars created a temporary normal over the previous several years where massive spending was a sign of strength and commitment to a streaming-centric future. The COVID pandemic meant studios were desperate for movies to fill up their direct-to-consumer or theatrical slates. Both circumstances provided justification for studios like Apple TV+ to spend $25 million on “Coda” in 2021, and then $15 million for “Cha Cha Real Smooth” in 2022.
With investors and shareholders now demanding actual revenue, the content arms race no longer provides an excuse for, say, Warner Bros. paying $15 million in 2019 for — again quality notwithstanding — the theatrically-bound “Blinded by the Light.” For streamers with huge coffers, however, slightly overbidding for a potential hit either via genuine interest or as a metaphorical flex can be little more than a rounding error.
BoulderLight Pictures partner Raphael Margules stated that “for these big streamers who want to make a statement that they are still in the game, spending $10-$15 million on a flick is the equivalent to an episode of television.”
Fear strikes out?
As for the dreaded WGA strike, the desire for completed films — or at least completed screenplays — could mitigate some spendthrift sensibilities.
“It’s not so much that strike fears could turn a maybe into a yes,” noted a distribution executive, “but that distributors may see a film and then inquire as to whether that filmmaker has any other finished screenplays in their desk drawer.”
Cinetic Media’s co-head of sales Jason Ishikawa noted that while “distributors need content flowing through the pipelines,” the notion of overbuying or being less picky due to fears of a labor stoppage has “not been communicated to the acquisition groups’ mandates.”
Sundance is about “discovery”
Margules argued in sentiments echoed by almost everyone else that “Sundance is as much about discovering bold new filmmakers and exciting new talent as it is about discovering that one great movie.”
While “Son of Rambow” in 2007 stumbled commercially, Will Poulter went on to fortune and glory. Director Craig Jennings — who had previously directed “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” — would eventually direct both of Illumination and Universal’s blockbuster “Sing” movies.
O’Donnell noted that “Sundance is more focused, compared to Cannes or AFM, on completed films that just need distribution and a spotlight.”
“No one has ever said, ‘Let’s sell the next “Skyline” at Sundance,’” he said.
Ishikawa, whose business is mostly focused on documentaries like this year’s “Invisible Beauty” and non-fiction titles, argued that the streaming platforms had proven themselves “pandemic-proof,” and that distributors were always going to have to potentially overbid for the right awards contender or potential commercial hit.
But of course, he’s a seller.
