The Sundance trophies have been handed out. The film crowd has left Park City to the skiers. So what kind of market was it? Better than expected, even if most of the deals were small ones. And compared to the zero that was Toronto, a veritable avalanche of very low 7-figure sales took place in Park City, with more expected in coming weeks. Some of the films have breakout potential, like The Kids Are All Right and the documentary Catfish. Others made great festival viewing, but questionable box office offerings. Buyers said they’d be surprised if any replicated the critical or financial success of last year’s Precious.
The only semi-sexy deal out of Toronto was A Single Man, which has grossed just $5.2 million since The Weinstein Co released it December 11th. This despite an engrossing story, strong acting, and gorgeous direction by Tom Ford, whose status as an iconic fashion designer helped sell the film. This 2010 Sundance offerings felt similarly small. Despite the manic deal-chasing by journalists like me, many of these films will likely play in art houses in limited release to elite audiences.
This was billed as the “new” Sundance festival under freshly installed director John Cooper. Even founder Robert Redford said the aim was to get back to indie basics. Buyers could have said the same. So many studio specialty divisions (aka faux indies) like Paramount Vantage, Miramax, Warner Independent Pictures, and Fox Atomic have shuttered. Overture became an open question during the fest. And The Weinstein Co is restructuring. Then again Summit Entertainment is showing interest, and Lionsgate is an eager but cautious player. So, too, a few companies I’ve never even heard of.
But, across the board, buyers are far more careful than in those drunk deal days when they overpaid for crazy films like Hamlet 2. Buyers this year told me they’d rather pass than overpay. And the closest thing to heated auctions came after the midnight screening of Buried, which Lionsgate bought for around $3.2 million for U.S. rights, and The Kids Are All Right, which went to Focus Features for nearly $5 million for U.S. and several offshore territories. But sellers and filmmakers were less concerned with M.G.’s than they were P&A commitments. VOD scenarios are growing, but still remain the consolation prize for films that don’t hook theatrical distributors.
Were things really that different, though? Some buyers felt that fest organizers this year were antagonistic to their needs. Screenings of acquisition titles overlapped others, forcing teams to split up rather than watch together. But some buyers and agents said organizers were smart not to turn every first screening of acquisition titles into high-pressure events. It was better for buyers to not rush, but rather to see films more than once and absorb the reviews. Others said they were put off by a set of rules distributed to buyers that made such stern admonitions as “Any kind of abuse, verbal or otherwise, of Theatre Managers and Staff will not be tolerated. Best case scenario, you will get a warning from Rosie. Worst case scenario, Rosie will confiscate your Sales Agent Credential.” Most buyers were insulted by the primer on how to behave.
One company on a roll at this Sundance was Cinetic Media, which sold The Kids Are All Right, brokered French territories for Holy Rollers, and expects to make a deal for Exit Through the Gift Shop, which wasn’t on the official program but screened at the Egyptian.
As for the agency scorecard, WME Global made three good deals on successive nights last week, selling (with CAA) Hesher on Wednesday, Blue Valentine on Thursday, and teaming with Wild Bunch to broker The Killer Inside Me deal on Friday. Sympathy for Delicious might be next.
The UTA Independent Film Group sold Buried and has bites on Douchebag, Welcome to the Rileys, Animal Kingdom, Restrepo, and Climate Refugees.
CAA brokered The Tillman Story and Twelve and co-repped Hesher. The agency will likely hook deals in the coming weeks for the popular doc Catfish and The Company Men, with both screening for studios. CAA is also closing a deal for Splice, once berthed at Senator before that company cratered. DVD should go to Sony, with an independent investor raising $20 million in P&A. Apparition or possibly Exclusive Media Group’s Newmarket is atop the distributor list. The multiplayer Splice deal is emblematic of the complex ways agents are brokering films these days as the indie biz hit bottom and now rebounds with fewer players.
The business model for this sector of the industry has been dead 2+ years. A lot of good people have been kicked off the reservation because of it. But it’s needed, it was a bad model. Hey, you want to make a movie? Buy a book, that’s what LB Mayer and Selznick did 70 years ago to turn a buck.
As international sales agents, we repped 5 films. In particular ANIMAL KINGDOM sold for 5 major international territories for very high prices to very prestigious distribs. Feel free to contact me if you’d like more info.
did agency PR depts co-write this article? this is a nice rundown of star-driven, agency-sold ‘indies’ that were picked up for a fraction of their multi-million dollar budgets, but the real story of sundance is that real indie filmmakers don’t need stars, agencies, budget or mass appeal to get their films out there… and maybe, in time, those movies will actually get better and create something akin to a French/Iranian/Italian new wave of American filmmaking. (of which, perhaps, mumblecore will prove to be an opening salvo?) or maybe that’s not ‘semi-sexy’ enough to merit reportage. the NY Times’ Manhola Dargis certainly thought so in a coupla articles she penned…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/movies/31dargis.html?ref=movies
As the writer/director of the 2005 Sundance entry “Duane Hopwood” which ended up on Roger Ebert’s”Best of 2005″ list, but had such a tortured sale and aborted release that it made it’s money back, but that’s it, I can tell you Sundance is simply a film festival. That’s all.
John Cooper, now running the festival, was head of programming, and a champion of my film, and I suspect, the reason it was accepted, for which I am forever grateful. He predicted to me personally the film “would do very well.”
The Variety review was good, saying “the film can do for David Schwimmer what “The Good Girl” did for Jennifer Anniston. Our sales agent, John Sloss, held up the review and told my producers “this is a MONEY review!”
Well, it wasn’t. The film limped into theaters in Kansas City and Tuscon, and maybe three other small cities, the victim of a bizarre release strategy that was the brainchild of two producers: Lemore Syvan and Marc Turtletaub. Both had just been badly wounded by weak reviews in N.Y. and L.A. for their last two films “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” (Syvan) and “Everything is Illuminated” (Turtletaub), and, in their rage that L.A. and N.Y. critics seem to dictate everything, they decided to reinvent the wheel and release the film first in cities like those I mentioned, then bring it to N.Y. and L.A., with good reviews and a box office war chest to withstand what Syvan told me would be “a bad review in the NY Times. I guarantee it.”
Wow.
Well, the film died, predictably, on the road. Roger Ebert caught it in Chicago however, and raved about it, had it on his show, gave it the two thumbs up, the whole nine yards. He also, both on his TV show and at his own festival which I later attended, shook his head at the release.
“What the hell are they thinking?” he said, to quote him exactly.
“I have no idea,” says I.
Roger Ebert is rapidly declining, health-wise. I wish him peace and thank him for what he did for me and my film. I will never forget it.
Alas, Sundance, under John Cooper, I believe, is simply reflecting his personal distaste for the hysteria that snowballed over the years under previous management. He wants it to be a film festival, not a shouting, nutso, film supermarket that resembles the Chicago Mercantile Exchange rather than a chance for people who made the films, and people who come to the festival, to see the films, chill the fuck out and actually enjoy themselves, rather than it being a near-death experience. Independent films don’t normally stand up under that kind of pressure. Neither do people.
Then, the expectation is they go out and “KILL!” at the theatrical box office, going up against Hollywood films with monster budgets and monster P&A. This is silly, silly stuff.
Theater owners don’t care. They want asses in seats. An indie film that doesn’t put asses in the seats? GONE. Another screen for Avatar.
And, that’s fine, in a Darwinian sort of way. Survival of the fittest.
So, the question lingers: whither art thou going, indie?
Well, not straight to the bank, 95% of the time. That needs to be understood: by the filmmakers, by the NY based indie movement, by the press, and by Hollywood.
I personally think, if Cooper continues to program appropriately, and avoids ridiculously out-sized films, in no way “independent,” and the promotion of the kind of show-business pushiness requiring a “Calm The Fuck Down” admonition like this years, that the festival will still thrive, but will adapt, as ALL non-tent-pole product is adapting, to the emerging reality: you cannot make an independent film about personal subject matter and expect it to go out and gross 5, 10, 20 million dollars at the theatrical box office. It is simply unreasonable, 95% of the time.
Either a model will emerge in new media for these films to have a more direct and lasting connection to a paying audience who are NOT subject to the whims of nutso producers or get-the-hook theater owners, or, it won’t.
Time will tell.
Church!
Thanks for the honest post, Matt, and putting your name to it as well.
Great comment. I remember John August wrote a similar postmortem on his blog about his directorial debut The Nines…
http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/nines-post-mortem
…which also had some Sundance buzz that turned into a disappointing theatrical release.
A rare insight – kudos!
Indie filmmakers usually have seven or eight scripts they would like to have made into movies. Among these will be greater and lesser works requireing different amounts of money. If the poeple who finance some of theses films don’t have 100% faith in the filmmakers vision,and version of the film,they should just go away and put their money into something they DO understand. As far as I know, nobody was maimed,injured, or killed in any bidding wars at Sundance this year. I think they can keep this stuff under control. More money going in to indie films will raise the quality,(to a point) of the films seen at any film festival. Let’s not forget that one of the main reasons filmmakers do this stuff is to get noticed by Hollywood, which may give them a chance to make the next “Star Wars”.
The truth is, 99% of these movies aren’t any good. The Kids are Alright is terrific. The rest? Not so much. For example, take the Usual Suspects. That movie, that script, could have been made for 1 million dollars. Granted, you’d have to use undiscovered actors, or Travolta types circa Pulp Fiction who would do a movie for near scale. Or Annie Hall. Or any movie that does not have a bunch of stunts, but involves good writing, good acting and no explosions. Sure, these are all-time great projects, but if you make a tiny movie out of a great script, you can make plenty of money on it. Look at The Squid and the Whale. 1.5 million dollar budget, 10 million dollar gross. Movies need to be made cheaper, and it seems like common sense, but the quality of these films at Sundance are just awful. It’s not the indie market alone that’s suffering, it’s a brain/talent drain that all industries are suffering from.
500 Days of Summer. Perfect example. Made for 10-15MM, brought back more than that from the soundtrack alone, and record sales are worse than DVD sales. If that movie were made for 1 to 3 million, it still could have made 8-25 with a decent P&A.
I heard that CAA sold “Twelve” to Hannover House for an eight ball and a box of Trojans because that was apparently all Eric Parkinson had in the trailer park he runs his company out of?