Today may be the first official day of the EFM, but many sales executives have been in town since Monday, taking meetings with European buyers, as hopes rise that the market will be the busiest since the Covid pandemic.
Buyers are reporting more screenings than usual, while tempting sales packages have mostly arrived late and include Sydney Sweeney in Studiocanal’s The Custom Of The Country, Upgrade’s Cupid starring Catherine Zeta Jones, North.Five.Six’s Blasphemous with Karen Gillan, Josh Hutcherson and Clive Owen, and mk2’s Fonda from Justine Triet starring Mia Goth and Andrew Scott.
Pre-buy opportunities, combined with the arrival of box-fresh US buyers Row K, the Warner Bros specialty label, Black Bear and Aura Entertainment, have raised the hopes of the indie sector. All eyes will be on these players to inject a sense of urgency into the independent market.
“Very strong packages announced – well-written scripts, good cast and budgets that fit the genre and package,” said Sky’s head of original film Andrew Orr, who changed his flight to arrive earlier.
Janina Vilsmaier, Protagonist Pictures’ SVP, noted: “Getting a package of A-list cast over the line can take a while, but everything has just been moving forward really fast… There’s real momentum at the moment.”
Some buyers are planning to leave Berlin by the weekend. “The market will keep going for the next few weeks anyway,” observed Orr. “We were still negotiating an AFM deal up until Christmas.”
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