One month on from the AFM a positive yet realistic mood prevails with sellers reporting solid market deal flow as they and their partners return to packaging and production in the wake of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
Most sales executives who spoke to Screen were heartened by buyer attendance. Asian buyers in general returned – although South Korea is challenging – and there was strong attendance too from Eastern Europe, Benelux and Scandinavia.
After a months-long production halt the hard work of securing talent has resumed. Now comes the jockeying as independent producers and financiers vie with studios and streamers for the top names heading into what is expected to be a frenetic first quarter of production in 2024 as thoughts turn to the EFM in February.
“Essentially, distributors had no assurance that production would be able to resume, which made sales of new packages more challenging,” said Bankside managing director Stephen Kelliher, who reported heavy interest from buyers on genre titles.
“We hope that the end of the strike brings back that certainty, although it seems inevitable that the next challenge will be availability of cast and crew, given the anticipated backlog of production.”
Lacking the ability to bring the usual volume of new packages to market at a time when the actors strike was ongoing (the SAG-AFTRA strike ended on November 9 and members have until December 5 to vote on ratifying the tentative three-year deal), most sellers pivoted to offer completed films.
AGC International, for example, added several to its slate in the run-up to the AFM and conducted brisk business on Sitges winner Late Night With The Devil, among others.
Rush back to production
“We’re excited that the strike has come to an end,” said Hugo Grumbar, Embankment Films co-founder. “It enables us to go to talent with confidence, not just for new titles but for existing titles that require talent promotion.
“There will be a rush to get back to work now and films that are already financed and ready to shoot will have a significant advantage in attracting or holding on to talent. As for EFM, there will be significantly more activity across the board.”
Highland Film Group’s vice president of acquisitions and development Caleb Ward noted the company recently commenced production in Ireland on Jess Varley’s sci-fi thriller The Astronaut, which stars Kate Mara, Laurence Fishburne and Gabriel Luna and obtained a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement while the strike was in effect.
Production began several weeks ago in Colombia on the high-concept horror Rosario with rising star Emeraude Toubia (Freeform’s Shadowhunters, Amazon’s With Love), David Dastmalchian (Oppenheimer, Late Night With The Devil, Dune) and José Zúñiga (Twilight).
The growing pickiness of streamers, who were not prolific buyers as they have been in the past, was a hindrance. “Many distributors are having challenges with the downstream buyers for films,” said Highland’s president of international sales Todd Olsson.
“The lucrative pay and free TV buyers seem to be contracting, and the streamers have curbed the volume and pricing of buys.” Nonetheless Olsson reported a good market turnout from most buyers and screened Land Of Bad, Sleeping Dogs, and Blood For Dust, and concluded a number of deals on new projects.
EFM forecasts
Arclight Films CFO/COO Brian Beckmann said the ongoing strike during AFM “took the wind out of our sails in terms of announcements” but reported sustained interest from buyers and said the company had three productions ready to get underway.
On EFM Beckmann opined: “You will see the El Niño of all Berlins with a downpour of projects getting off the ground and going into production. Unless you have a great project it will get lost. There will be a deluge of announcements and I’m not sure how the market will respond.”
Beta Cinema’s EVP of acquisitions Thorsten Ritter was wary about attaching too much anticipation to the EFM. “It may be busy with the strike now at an end,” he said. ”Many projects will be picked up again and packages may be secured – but maybe this will not work as fast as we think now. And then it will be Cannes again…”
Jan Naszewski, founder and head of Warsaw-based sales agency New Europe Film Sales, reported productive meetings with Asian buyers on [Polish Oscar submission] The Peasants, sales on outstanding territories for Sometimes I Think About Dying, and a strong response to Aislinn Clarke’s upcoming English- and Irish-language horror Fréwaka.
Ella Field, EVP of international sales at Signature Entertainment, said buyers were mostly interested in horror and feelgood films. She sold “a chunk of territories” on two new promos and said business was solid despite the distractions of the new market venue at Le Meridien Delfina and the southern California hotel workers’ strike.
“We had a Scott Adkins action film [Take Cover] that worked really well,” Field says. “We had a war film, The Partisan, which is obviously a little difficult with the timing at this point, but it’s World War II not modern-day warfare, and it still worked to the level we expected.”
While Field said Europe and Eastern European buyers in particular turned up to buy and US buyers “felt a shade more positive”, South Korea was a challenge. “Their marketplace is in a really difficult space right now,” the executive said. “They used to be some of the biggest players in Asia. Right now, it’s a complete transformation. Their market has shifted – the younger audiences aren’t going back to the cinemas. It’s a massive decline for them.”
Meanwhile Caroline Couret-Delegue, managing director of Film Seekers, was “underwhelmed” by the turnout from Japan. “Several of my usual Japanese distributors [were not there],” she says. “For that, I feel worse that I didn’t go to Busan.”
Fortitude International’s Nadine de Barros transacted on upcoming Irish thriller Mr. Smith starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin from the After YA franchise. “It was one of our busier markets in a while,” she said.
De Barros also sold a project on the strength of the script alone. “Quality of script is everything now. A good cast and director does not overcome the quality of a [sub-standard] script.”
She added, “This has been true for a while, but what I’m finding even more is the amount of time it takes to close a deal with a buyer. They’re taking a risk on your movie in the same way that an investor takes a risk on your movie. Those caution levels have changed just because it’s become so difficult to release films in the marketplace.”
Ryan Bury, SVP of acquisitions and sales at MPX, reported steady business on documentary Ship Of Dreams: Titanic Movie Diaries and a handful of completed films including horror movie Easter Bloody Easter, spy thriller It’s A Good Day To Die, and romance The Crossroads.
“There were definitely more buyers on the Asian side, while some of the key people from Latin America and parts of Europe who are normally there preferred to stay closer to home,” said Bury. “My takeaway from a lot of international buyers was, ‘I’ll see you in Berlin.’”
There were lots of complaints about the elevators at Le Meridien Delfina, while buyers also bemoaned the distance they had to walk between hotels and private residents rented out by sellers.
Gathering feedback
Jean Prewitt, president and CEO of market organiser Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), said she and her board were gathering feedback on the new venue. “The Loews really pushed us out the door on very short notice last year, and decisions had to be made very quickly,” she said. ”It would be a shame if we chose to do that kind of rapid decision-making a second time rather than building in the time to really talk to people.”
“It goes without saying that first years are always tough, and noise [from striking hotel workers] didn’t help,” said Prewitt.
Some attendees renewed calls to move AFM to Miami, Las Vegas or New York, while roughly the same number Screen spoke to want the market to stay in Los Angeles so they can add meetings with producers and agencies while they are in town.
“Consider the risks that all those venues present, including unions,” Prewitt said. “In Miami you have hurricanes, there’s bad weather in New York and there’s the cost – there’s no way New York would ever be cheaper than Los Angeles. And our show is the independent industry and that’s a small industry in most of those cities, so you get lost real fast. The conversation is a much bigger one than did the elevator work on Friday and the board will take that on.”
Prewitt was pleased with the turnout which she estimated to be in the 5-6,000 range for total attendees. Full numbers are expected to follow soon.
“There’s no question that given that we had all the sales companies and buyers we expected, the industry wants a market in this space. And we hear that very good business was done. So the question is where are the points of flexibility to make it better for them?”
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