On the eve of the inaugural TIFF: The Market (September 10-16), the US independent film community is on the fence about the utility of an official event six weeks before the American Film Market (AFM) in Los Angeles.
Until now, TIFF’s vast public festival (September 10-20) and late-summer vibe in attractive downtown Toronto have unfolded alongside an unofficial market. Buyers and sellers transacted on outstanding territories in previously announced packages or started casual talks on AFM projects. Sales launches were opportunistic, and there were significant deals on occasion.
What a difference a $16.5m (C$23m) federal funding injection makes. This week some 6,000 industry participants are expected to descend on Toronto, including more than 800 buyers (of whom 200 have either not attended TIFF before or not done so for a while and will get subsidised travel and accommodation), and more than 225 exhibitors.
TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey, market head Charles Tremblay and their TIFF executive team say they are catering to the industry’s need to move projects further along at this time of the year. The federal allocation is not renewable, and so in the years to come TIFF leadership will need to establish the market and its new revenue streams as a self-sustaining business.
To pull together packages, some sellers have worked through the dog days of August, when much of the US and Europe are on holiday. They and their acquisition counterparts – who must now cover not just the festival but market screenings – are preparing for long days of meetings at the market hub in Metro Toronto Convention Centre and the two official hotels, the Ritz-Carlton and Intercontinental.
Other sellers will stay off-site in their regular hotel-offices of choice, transact as they need to, and watch how the market plays out.
Busy slates
In recent years, new packages for TIFF have tended to make their way into buyers’ inboxes very late in the day. This year, only a handful of big packages that would not look out of place at Cannes or the AFM have been unveiled pre-market. They include Black Bear’s crime thriller Copperhead with Miles Teller, Jason Momoa and Adria Arjona; Angel’s Michael Keaton and Morgan Freeman western Rode To Ruin; and Mister Smith and CAA Media Finance’s romantic comedy Otherwise Engaged with Halle Berry, Zoë Kravitz, Colin Firth, and Jack Whitehall.
“It’s a litmus test,” says Dylan Leiner of Sony Pictures Classics, of this year’s inaugural market. “Everybody will be seeing what is useful and what works and doesn’t work. Many sellers are excited because packages and projects that were not ready for Cannes can launch now rather than wait for AFM.”
Sony Classics’ TIFF films include Florian Zeller’s Venice premiere Bunker; Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas; and John Turturro’s The Only Living Pickpocket In New York.
“We’re definitely seeing it as a market,” says Diane Ferrandez of AGC Studios, co-head of worldwide sales and distribution with Nat McCormick. “TIFF has always been a market for us, because as long as you come in with projects, all the bigger distributors are going to be there. We’ve had some very productive TIFFs.”
Among other business, AGC will launch sales on Casey Affleck’s gothic drama and Venice world premiere Company (which is not in selection in TIFF) starring Nick Nolte, Ben Mendelsohn, Adelaide Clemens, and Atticus Affleck, and continue sales on remaining territories on TIFF world premiere Babies from Lauren Miller Rogen starring Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, and Kate Berlant.
“We have a pretty packed slate,” says McCormick.
Production has wrapped and sales talk will continue on the Russell Crowe action title The Last Druid, while the four-quadrant family feature Critters that AGC announced in Cannes is in production.
“AFM is in a favourable position in the calendar from a timing perspective and [us] being able to put the packages together in time,” he says. “But the opportunity to meet with buyers in TIFF is very meaningful for us. The buyers are engaged.”
Arianne Fraser, CEO and co-founding partner of sales, production and financing outfit Highland Film Group, is taking a different approach. “We’re really treating TIFF as we’ve treated that market in the past. It was a bridge between Cannes that sets us up for AFM.
“In the event we have a movie, Bluefly, which didn’t come together by Cannes but we’re shooting in November, that can bridge the gap between those two markets.
But in terms of it being a fully-fledged film market. we’re attending, but not as part of [TIFF: The Market] yet.”
Directed by Nimrod Antal, Bluefly is a sci-fi thriller starring Russell Crowe and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Highland is also selling Neil Burger’s action thriller Barracuda, Justin Chadwick’s action spy-thriller The Mark starring Jessica Alba, Tom Hopper and Elsa Pataky, and Lisette Feliciano’s Iron Jane with Eiza Gonzalez and Brandon Sklenar.
Highland also owns US distributor The Avenue, which presents an opportunity to screen acquisition titles in the festival and market. The Avenue might pick up a couple of titles at TIFF to feed into the annual slate of six to eight releases.
Buyers’ view
“We’ll see if the sellers really embrace [TIFF: The Market],” says buyer Scott Shooman, head of IFC Entertainment Group. “We’re seeing some [sellers] take more of a market-level approach, and we’re seeing lineups that we typically wouldn’t see in Toronto. Where we may have had an informal meeting or a coffee in years past, now it feels a little more strategic on how the sellers are going in. It’s up to the marketplace to decide how many scripts are going to go out and how many deals will get done.”
On the festival front Shooman, who oversees Independent Film Company, Shudder, IFC Center, and RLJE, notes: “TIFF plays an incredibly broad range of films, but historically, the Midnight Madness section has had exceptional taste and is always an area of real focus for us.”
Last year, Curry Barker’s Midnight Madness entry Obsession became the story of the festival when Focus Features pounced in a near-worldwide deal for $15m. It was money well spent: the horror has grossed more than $500m worldwide, and an awards campaign is being readied.
“Given Shudder, we naturally have a strong appetite for genre, and the specialty marketplace continues to become more genre-friendly,” Shooman says.
Independent Film Company and Shudder have US or North American distribution rights to Joshua Giuliano’s River in Midnight Madness (Upgrade is handling international sales); Michael Dowse’s The Stunt Driver starring Jay Baruchel in Special Presentations; and, along with Sapan Studio, Leah Nelson’s Centrepiece animation Tangles, which premiered in Cannes.
Jessica Lacy, Gersh partner and head of film finance and distribution, says TIFF appears to have reduced the number of P&I screenings to one per film in some cases. This is likely to make way for more market screenings and can have advantages, says Lacy. “It forces buyers to go to the public screenings, which are much more impactful,” she says.
Among other titles, Lacy is selling Werner Herzog’s Venice premiere and TIFF selection Bucking Fastard starring Rooney Mara and Kate Mara; Affleck’s Company (jointly representing US sales with Cinetic); and maths prodigy drama The Julia Set, screening in Special Presentations starring Chase Infiniti.
Lacy is encouraged by the recent increase in activity from US buyers such as Black Bear and Sumerian Pictures.
That group presumably does not include Row K, which opened for business at TIFF last year and made four statement buys, only to run into difficulties over allegedly unpaid invoices and internal disagreements over strategy.
President Megan Colligan and other executives departed, and a couple of films, including Maude Apatow’s 2025 TIFF premiere Poetic License, were put back on the market or aligned with other distributors. It is understood Row K’s owners are continuing to reconfigure the venture into a more commercially-oriented operation.
New names
This season’s new domestic buyers include a nascent distribution arm at Cameron Lamb’s arthouse company Alexander, which recently picked up North America, UK and Australia and New Zealand on Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo’s Cannes Un Certain Regard premiere Ben-imana.
A couple of weeks ago, the world’s largest exhibitor, AMC, launched Leawood Films, targeting fully-financed or completed small and medium-sized films. While the belief is Leawood may jump into the fray after the first round or two of acquisition offers, it remains to be seen how aggressively it will engage at festivals and markets.
One thing for sure is the development has not thrilled independent buyers. “This is a slap in the face of the distributors, who rely on theatres to keep them healthy,” said one. “The company that controls 40% of the theatres is doing this, which just further wounds a delicate ecosystem of independents. Why don’t they try to help the films that do have distribution? It feels counterintuitive.”
Christine D’Souza Gelb, formerly of 2AM, is returning with After Hours. The new venture jointly represents North American sales on animation fantasy The Turning Door with Mister Smith, which handles international rights at the market and is handling worldwide sales on Theo Rollason’s Venice out-of-competition selection Queer Edward II.
Platform
Independent buyers are keeping an eye on TIFF’s Platform programme following an Academy rule change that allows any non-English-language winner of the section to be eligible for selection for submission to the international feature film Oscar. Platform has expanded from 10 to 12 selections of mostly auteur-driven international features and expanded the jury from three to five, led this year by Argentina’s Pablo Trapero.
But much of the buyer focus will be on the festival’s starry selections. “TIFF’s an audience-friendly festival and while it’s large, it’a very good barometer of how things play, which is so important in our theatrical world,” says Michael Costigan, Jason Bateman’s partner at Aggregate Pictures. It is one of the producers on Courteney Cox’s Evil Genius in Gala Presentations starring David Harbour and Patricia Arquette.
“I know people who are excited about the market,” he continues. ”Anything that helps us bring these great stories to the screen, I’m certainly excited about.”
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