Airlines buyers are in Cannes looking for indie films despite budget challenges and stiff competition for passenger attention from on-board high-speed internet connections.
“Airlines like to support the indie market,” said New York-based Simon Cuthbert, vice president of content licensing and distribution at Anuvu, who sells into airlines including British Airways, Delta Airlines and Air France.
Anuvu releases around 20-30 titles each month across its roster, including three Hollywood English-langauge films, six to 10 Asian films, a few European, Latin American and international films, plus TV, classic libraries and a couple of docs each month. Regular partners are A24, Pathe and Lionsgate.
However, budgets have remained under pressure since Covid. “An airline may have had a $10m [per year] budget, now we’re lucky if they’re spending $3 to $5m,” said Cuthbert.
Further airline buyers in the indie market include Terry Steiner International, Aardwolf, Horizon and Skeye.
Paul Poste, a San Diego-based partner at Captive Entertainment, says his company pick up about a dozen films at all the key markets, as well as on an almost weekly basis between markets, with Emirates a key client.
But the challenging presales market is having an impact on airline acquisitions. “A lot of films that are being pitched, the sales agents aren’t able to lock in sales in France, Italy, Germany and Spain,” he said. “We count on dubs from those territories. It’s really challenging right now. Hopefully AI will become good enough that we can use it for subtitling or dubbing, but it’s not there.”
Cuthbert noted that Anuvu is pre-buying, but “as long as we can trust the team, we read the script and don’t see any red flags. We do pre-buy, but it’s not the ideal.”
Romantic comedies, musicals and comedies perform best at 30,000 feet. “Airline audiences, particularly at the front of the cabin, skew a bit older, maybe people who don’t go to the cinema regularly, but they’re the most vocal and important customers to an airline,” said Cuthbert. “We need to serve that demographic in a way that maybe the major studios, or at least their big theatrical titles don’t.”
Excessive nudity and horror films don’t work well on flights. “The last thing a flight attendant wants to hear is someone jumping in their seat or screaming,” added Poste.
Airlines are also becoming more flexible in release schedules for their in-flight content. Previously, in-flight content was updated on a fixed monthly cycle. Many are now moving towards a weekly, or daily, cycle, enabling distributors to take advantage of increasingly agile theatrical windows.
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