On January 22, WME Independent sales representatives braced themselves for a night-long negotiation at the Sundance Film Festival. Once a staple of major film festivals with million-dollar price tags soaring to the heights of the Utah mountains, these types of marathon bidding wars had gone digital or almost entirely disappeared during the pandemic.
For the first time since 2020, the agents filled their chalet with pizza bites, cookies and sugary soda to fuel those conversations. Her mission was to find the right studio for “Theater Camp,” a backstage performance that received a rapturous reception at Sundance, where co-directors Nick Leiberman and Molly Gordon were joined by cast members Ben Platt and Noah Galvin. The film entertained bids and attracted interest from several bidders, including some streamers. Deborah McIntosh, co-head of WME Independent Film, said the team was delighted to be back in the room with potential buyers after COVID-19 forced the last two Sundances online.
“It’s a Zoom generation that we’ve stepped into, and that’s fine and efficient. But nothing can replace Searchlight Pictures, who show up to the ‘Theater Camp’ sales meeting with a case of ‘confiscated liquor’ that references a funny scene in the film,” she says.
The case of liquor was a winning touch. Searchlight won the distribution rights to Theater Camp for $8 million. It was one of several splashy pacts to come out of Sundance, where “Fair Play,” an erotic drama that sold to Netflix for $20 million, and John Carney’s “Flora and Son,” an uplifting look at a single mother and their teenage son, who enter into a relationship their shared love of music, which was sold to Apple for nearly $20 million. Other films set to leave the festival in distribution include A Little Prayer, which was sold to Sony Pictures Classics, and documentaries Kokomo City and Little Richard: I Am Everything, both acquired by Magnolia. But with Sundance wrapping up its first in-person release in three years, there are several films still looking for buyers.
“The market has historically been slow,” says John Sloss, a veteran sales representative and executive who runs Cinetic Media. “I think these festivals will continue to get longer. We’ve all gotten a little older and have lost the taste for night-long negotiations.”
One reason the market has never peaked is that big players like Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Amazon aren’t writing big checks as freely as they used to. A newfound cost consciousness appears to have gripped the media business as it grapples with a slowdown in subscription growth for its streaming services. But at least the streamers made some local noise with “Fair Play” and “Flora and Son” after spending most of September sitting at the Toronto market.
“The mix of buyers and the level of deals indicate that the market is very healthy,” notes Christine Hsu of CAA Media Finance. WME’s McIntosh also highlighted the range of bidders – from the financially strong Apple to the indie platform Mubi – who all acquired films at different price levels. She called this variety of offerings “essential to the survival” of the art house market. A robust studio release calendar for the coming year, she says, reminds audiences “that going to the movies is a form of recreation they like to do on the weekends. If we can get them used to having fun in this traditional setting, they won’t just want to see the Marvel movies. They will want the counter-programming.”
Still, the box office for indie films remains depressed after failing to regain their pre-pandemic stride. There were a few breakthroughs like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but even rave reviews couldn’t make “The Banshees of Inisherin” or “Tár” hits. That track record discouraged some studios from committing to films that were artistically daring but commercially risky.
Ryan Heller, Executive Vice President of Film and Documentary at Topic Studios, came to Sundance with three films: Infinity Pool, Shortcomings and Theater Camp. One of those films, Infinity Pool, premiered after already securing a distribution deal with Neon. The other two were looking for homes – “Theater Camp” was sold to Searchlight while “Shortcomings” is still negotiating with potential buyers. Heller believes a personal festival helped generate interest in his films. “There was a palpable excitement getting back into the shared experience of watching movies,” he says. “How films are doing in these cinemas helps with sales. A lot of the projects that sold early were things that audiences responded to immediately.”
Make sure the negotiations stretch out over the next few weeks or even months. Other potential bidders are hoping prices will come down over time. Then they want to strike.
“A lot of movies were incredibly expensive,” says Tom Bernard, co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics. “They have huge budgets for a Sundance film. A lot of these movies are between $10 million and $20 million, and that’s a lot of money for a movie.”
While the market is usually the talk of the festival, this year it has been overshadowed by an accessibility controversy. The US Dramatic Competition judges walked out on the premiere of “Magazine Dreams” because the festival was unable to provide a working closed captioning device for deaf judge Marlee Matlin. Fellow judges Jeremy O. Harris and Eliza Hittman left in solidarity with Matlin. The episode shed an unflattering light on Sundance’s accessibility practices.
The fact that the festival relied solely on closed captioning devices – seen as outdated and inadequate technology in the disability community – has angered many.
Some say a better approach would have been if Sundance required all filmmakers to provide an open captioned version and have at least one or two open captioned screenings for each film during the festival, as other festivals like Hot Docs do do. (Most films are screened several times during the festival). Sources say that according to a knowledgeable source, the festival didn’t mandate an open caption version and merely “requested it very late in the process.” Magazine Dreams was one of many films that didn’t have an open caption version on hand when it premiered.
“The idea of a closed-captioned screening is perhaps not nearly as quixotic as it was three or four years ago,” says Crip Camp director James LeBrecht, a disability rights advocate who was born with spina bifida was and a wheelchair. “Sundance really should take the lead for the community this serves by saying, ‘The highest quality experience for people is a closed captioned version. And that’s what we’re going to offer.”
Richie Siegel, co-founder of the Inevitable Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for disabled screenwriters, was appalled by the conversation that ensued after the strike, with some suggesting open captioning would hurt potential sales.
“If you’re worried that adding subtitles to your movie will hurt people who want to buy the movie, then maybe the movie is bad. Maybe there’s a bigger problem there,” says Siegel. “I don’t think it’s the captions that will deter a buyer. I think the discourse on this shows the true colors of many people. As for the argument that closed captioning is expensive, if we look at the budget of these films, I would imagine more money was spent on chips, sandwiches, and Uber rides. I mean, I can make a list of probably 100 things in the budget that would add up more than caption costs.”
Sundance will conduct a debriefing after the festival to determine what could have been done differently to avoid the judges’ walkout and subsequent backlash. The festival invited LeBrecht to participate.
“It’s okay to say there were some real bugs and to ask why there were bugs and what can be done now to take care of them?” LeBrecht adds.
Though many executives and agents said they were happy to be back in person, they noted that Sundance seemed less frequented. Big shows weren’t always packed, lines seemed shorter and restaurant reservations, which were usually impossible to come by during the festival, were more plentiful.
But there were plenty of other signs that Sundance was reemerging after its long hiatus. A party for Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her film You Hurt My Feelings boasted a line around the block at Macro House on Main Street. The humble corners of the Butcher’s Chop House restaurant were littered with the likes of Jonathan Majors and Taylor Paige. Moguls like Mark Burnett and Kevin Ulrich brought the dance party to Sundance, visiting a nightlife institution Tao pop-up on the outskirts. Watching A-listers dive into heated igloos and sip Whispering Angel while acclaimed artist Diplo DJed made it feel like there had never been a three-year absence.
Maybe there will be more to celebrate next year.