Vincent Maraval, president of film sales and production company Goodfellas (formerly Wild Bunch), said the industry needs more distributors while speaking at the San Sebastian International Film Festival’s (SSIFF) Creative Investors Conference.
“There are more and more producers and less and less distributors,” Maraval said while participating in a panel titled ‘The Global Film Industry: State of the Union 2023’. “We need new distributors.”
“When you look at the market, country by country, we know there are historical distributors but we are still waiting for the new ones. We need more A24s, we need more Neons. And the problem is if they are not there, there must be a structural problem. The most difficult issue today is how to strengthen distributors because we cannot produce so many films with so few distributors.”
Also speaking on the panel was mk2 Films’ managing director Fionnuala Jamison, Blueprint Pictures co-chairman Pete Czernin and WIIP’s head of global drama David Flynn.
Less US-centric market
The increasing demand for non-US content was also a hot topic of discussion. Flynn, who has produced HBO’s Mare Of Easttown and White House Plumbers, said the market “is a little less [US-centric] and that’s not a bad thing. I think a lot of people, a lot of filmmakers or writers, creators are not looking to go to America to succeed. They’re quite happy being successful under their own terms.”
Flynn added that audiences’ “awareness of global voices has increased, too”.
Czernin meanwhile spoke of a “local for local” trend between distributors and content. “In both TV and film, and other distributors, they’re more like, ‘Let’s find movies that actually work for us in this territory’,” the UK producer of The Banshees Of Inisherin said.
Jamison added that “international markets were really opening up theatrical to younger audiences” while pointing to the success of her company’s sales of Cannes prize-winner How To Have Sex. “But there’s still some work for the distributors to do in figuring out how to do that.”
The Creative Investors conference continues tomorrow (September 27) with speakers including producer Carole Scotta of Haut et Court and David Davoli, president of international at Anonymous Content.
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