Cannes and AFM were tough last year and as meetings begin in the South of France on Monday, attendees will look to build on the uptick in activity seen in Berlin, where sources reported modest yet meaningful engagement around a trimmer line-up of packages.
At time of writing US sellers had announced a fair number of projects including new work from Park Chan-wook and his leading men Matthew McConaughey, Austin Butler, and Pedro Pascal in 193’s sales title Brigands Of Rattlecreek; Ed Zwick’s Richard Gere romance Asymmetry at FilmNation; AGC’s AI-enhanced family project Critterz from the writers of Paddington In Peru; and Donald Petrie’s comedy The Last Resort starring Daisy Ridley, Alden Ehrenreich, and Sam Neill at Voltage Pictures.
Whereas the sense is last year’s Cannes market was bloated with too many packages of middling quality, the early read on the 2026 offerings is more promising. American sellers cite Germany, the UK, the Nordics and Italy as among the more active buyers. Now begins the hard work of turning appealing ideas on paper into reality.
Lionsgate International’s The Housemaid’s Secret should be a standout because it is based on a proven concept that earned $399m at the global box office since launching later last year and sees director Paul Feig and star Sydney Sweeney return alongside new cast member Kirsten Dunst. Territory buyers are likely to face high asking prices.
WME Independent (WMEI) is exiting the international sales space as Alex Walton builds a new venture. The company will continue to handle US and North American sales under Deb McIntosh, who will be on the Croisette with Walton and international team members as they honouring outstanding commitments.
US acquisitions teams are pre-buying for late 2027 and 2028 and it is understood that late 2026 slots are available for completed films – but they have to be right, an amorphous concept that remains elusive until it isn’t. Amid geopolitical mayhem and rising cost of living, the appetite for quality diversion is high and film-going remains a relatively low-cost endeavour – in sharp contrast to air travel during an energy crisis.
“Buyers are looking for something that has an audience,” says Palisades Park Pictures CEO Tamara Birkemoe. “That’s what worked for The Magic Faraway Tree. Given the times we live in that movie felt good, happy, adventurous. People want to forget what’s going on outside. Audiences are still out there; it’s just if they don’t know what the movie is they’re not going to see it.”
The Enid Blyton family adaptation starring Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy had grossed more than $25m through its initial international rollout at time of writing, with negotiations ongoing for France. The Palisades roster features Bill Condon’s South Africa-set drama The Road Home with Cynthia Erivo, Thabo Rametsi, and Guy Pearce, as well as Mark Rylance’s directorial debut Nice Fish, which will star Rylance and Michelle Willioma and is adapted from the absurdist play Rylance brought to the London stage a decade ago.
Birkemoe, who will show footage from the $25m John Travolta romantic comedy That’s Amore which has wrapped, concedes that assembling packages is getting harder on more commercial projects where backers must lure stars from higher-paying studio, streamer and TV work. “Everybody wants the same people for those movies and you’re competing,” she notes.
Rylance will attend Palisades’ buyers presentation and A24, FilmNation, and 193 are among US sellers who will host sessions on Monday and Tuesday.
US buyers remain conservative. Larger independent buyers led by A24, Neon, Focus Features, Searchlight Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics, and Mubi will be on the prowl for festival selections. A lot of films are already spoken for and Neon, in search of a seventh consecutive Palme d’Or, has nine of them including six in Competition.
The larger independent operators actively pre-buy and compete against the streamers and studios. There are no champions of consolidation in the independent sector, but if there is a silver lining around the Warner Bros Discovery-Paramount merger, should it secure regulatory approval, it is that some of the more compelling independently-financed packages could find their way to the $110bn monolith. Paramount’s top buyer Lia Buman is back in the studio fold after running Tango Entertainment, the company she co-founded with billionaire oil magnate Tim Headington.
“We’re seeing young audiences embrace certain types of movies,” head of IFC Entertainment Group Scott Shooman says of film-going in North America, where Gen Z has bucked the trend of a secular decline in admissions. “We’re excited to see box office come back. Indies are owning more and more of the top 10. That offers opportunities for risk-taking distributors to find their way.”
Shooman is excited to find out more about the Cannes offerings, noting: “Cannes is the Cadillac, the best in class of festivals and markets. It’s Costco but also a gourmet Italian market.”
Among tempting acquisition titles are Steven Soderbergh’s AI-enhanced John Lennon: The Last Interview in Special Screenings; Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love starring Rami Malek and Laszlo Nemes’s French-language Moulin, both in Competition; Reed Van Dyk Directors’ Fortnight selection Atonement led by Kenneth Branagh, Haim Abbas and Boyd Holbrook; and Quentin Dupieux’s English-language Midnight entry Full Phil with Kristen Stewart, Woody Harrelson, and Emma Mackey.
Smaller players
For smaller US distributors, their ability to offer meaningful minimum guarantees has been compromised by the streamers’ retreat from the pay-1 space as they shift towards more in-house production.
Will the cohort of new companies breathe life into the sector? Everyone hopes so, but the jury is out. 1-2 Special has been steadily active since it opened for business in early 2025 and bought A Poet and Urchin in Cannes last year. Sumerian Pictures acquired the Sundance and Berlin hit Josephine at the start of the year.
Row K was the poster child of the new movement when it bought four films in Toronto last September yet now more closely resembles a torn flyer as backer Media Capital Technologies pivots towards solely commercial bets and looks for a new president after Megan Colligan left over a difference in strategic outlook.
David Glasser is raising funds for 101 Studios’ move into distribution and has maintained a low profile after unveiling a sales partnership with FilmNation at AFM. Black Bear has moved into US distrribution and Warner Bros Clockwork, led by ex-Neon executive Christian Parkes, just announced it will release Cannes Classics selection Ken Russell’s The Devils after acquiring Sean Baker’s upcoming Ti Amo!. Sources say it still needs to define its lane.
“This is the softest ,most unreliable US market it’s been for a while,” says Elsa Ramo of Los Angeles-based law firm Ramo, who has worked across independent deals for years and also represents Hollywood clients like Imagine Entertainment and Jude Law’s Riff Raff Entertainment.
“There’s lot of perplexity on the lack of activity since Sundance […] There’s a lot of uncertainty over what it takes to secure a domestic sale and that’s having an impact on how these packages can generate pre-sales and greenlights later this year.”
The challenging pre-sales space has put greater demands on equity in finance plans. “I suspect there will be a lot of heavy equity courting in Cannes,” Ramo notes, “and probably more internationally and not just US-centric, to subsidise that uncertainty.”
Tim White and Trevor White of LA-based Star Thrower Entertainment produced Van Dyk’s Directors’ Fortnight selection and Iraq War drama Atonement, which is based on a New Yorker article about an Iraq War veteran who seeks closure with surviving members of a family devastated by the prior actions of US troops.
They see more than one path to success for Van Dyk’s feature debut. “It’s not necessarily that the worldwide deal is better than a US deal with a combination of great foreign partners,” Tim says. “Both options are great. The home run is to find a company that really understands the movie and believes in it and wants to be very aggressive with their distribution plan.”
Trevor has known Van Dyk since university and watched his friend’s shorts garner Oscar nominations. When he read the first draft of Atonement in 2021 he wanted to get it made. Star Thrower was involved in financing conversations, which included soft money, and production took place last summer in Jordan and Dallas. The brothers have made films like King Richard with Warner Bros and Eternity at A24. “We see all ends of the spectrum and the key with the indie market right now is flexibility,” notes Tim. The Veterans, CAA Media Finance and WMEI represent rights.
David Siegel produced Sachs’ Competition entry The Man I Love, in which Malek plays a queer performer dying of AIDS in 1980s New York, with his Big Creek Projects partners Scott McGehee and Mike Spreter, and SBS Productions in France. The film was fully financed with equity from Big Creek and several other partners.
“It’s hard to make independent films work financially just based on box office anymore,” he says, noting that pay windows must account for a share of the revenue. “That’s [the case] even more so now because theatrical distribution is just tougher.”
After Big Creek endured a difficult spell with projects due to the volatile nature of the US independent production cycle (Siegel and McGehee directed 2025 TIFF selection The Friend starring Naomi Watts and Bill Murray, which was initially meant to go before the pandemic with a different cast) they decided to play a greater role in financing lower-budget features to retain artistic control.
The partners began talking to their longtime friend Sachs around 18 months ago and shot in September and October 2025, and will also be taking meetings in Cannes to discuss Sach’s next feature, a book adaptation. “We’ve been trying to lean into directors and projects we believe in and not think so much in terms of how do we sell this if it doesn’t work,” McGehee notes.
Mk2 and WMEI handle sales and Mk2 closed a French deal with Memento. “It’s just a beautiful movie,” Siegel says. “Ira’s directing at the top of his game right now. It really feels like he’s come of age and come into his own style and storytelling skills. It’s just really a beautiful movie.”
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