The film that won the Sundance dramatic Grand Jury Prize, A.V.
RockwellsA Thousand and One, arrived at the festival under the comforting wing of Focus Features.
Its still negotiating on four films includingEileen, which has several offers.
‘A Thousand and One’ and ‘Flora and Son’Courtesy of Sundance/Getty
Introducing [Floradirector]John Carneyto Apple and other distributors made a big difference.
We could do that virtually, but its less fun and less dynamic, said McIntosh.
Given cinema woes, the focus on a theatrical is telling.
Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich appear in Fair PlayCourtesy of Sundance Institute
Even streamers have some kind of theatrical run.
Even great reviews dont mean deals.
Translating acclaim into dollars, however, is not a given.
Its impossible to say what the Jury Award would have done for a sale, said Lebedev.
People loved the movie.
The response has been fantastic.
We will never know the answer to that, agreed Weston.
We chose a different path.
To have a distributor up front.
And we slept better.
Auctioning movies is fascinating, said Vaisman.
When you have a big win, its great.
But I think thats more of a needle in a haystack for producers.
You want to make them the right way and sell for certain numbers.
And some land and others dont.
The market has always been risky.
Some movies are lower risk than others.
Those three that sold were meant to sell.
Were built to sell, said one producer.
It has a theatrical commitment from Searchlight.
Ditto with Focus andA Thousand and One.
It was [important] to all of us, and thats why we ended up there.
About 20% of the 100-plus films presented at Sundance arrived already spoken for.
Big distributors like Focus, Searchlight and A24 went into the festival with pretty full slates.
Others, like Sony Pictures Classics, are said to be still actively looking.
We had a couple of aggressive buyers on the eve of the festival, and we decided to close.
It felt like the right move for the film.
Sometimes offers are slow to come, sometimes not.
In this case we were fortunate to have them early.
With myriad docs at a festival known for them, why this one?
There was a TV web link involved.
It has an educational element.
It will be around for a long time, said Greenwich co-president Ed Arentz.
It could, in fact, recoup production costs and remunerate anyone that invested in it.
That can be galling for the filmmakers.
Paramount+ just absorbed Showtime.
HBO Max parent Warner Bros Discovery is working through a messy merger and streaming rebrand.
A slow theatrical recovery has changed the entire festival marketplace.
Not in a good way, said one producer.
The big difference is the uncertainty with theatrical.
He and others are hopeful the theatrical market for indie film will rebound.
A lot of us have been talking about it, said one attendee.
Normally, its not a problem, people would go to the next screening.
But no one went.
