Neon head of distribution Elissa Federoff was one of the high-profile guests at the Locarno Film Festival’s industry programme Locarno Pro, delivering a keynote at the StepIn think tank and speaking “in conversation” about original language film distribution in the US.
Launched in 2017, independent distributor Neon has famously acquired three movies — 2019’s Parasite, 2021’s Titane and 2022’s Triangle of Sadness — that have gone on to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Parasite was the first non-English language feature to win best film at the Academy Awards. Neon is reportedly exploring a sale of all or part of its assets.
“The greatest strength of Neon is that the films we pick are all films that we really, really love and believe in,” Federoff explained, stressing that the distributor was “agnostic” about a film’s genre, country of origin or language. “We only pick films that have great storytellers, great stories. Original films with a social currency, a social relevancy and ones that will make an impact with an audience that will really generate an emotional experience for them.”
She said Neon looks to release films with unique campaigns. “We manage to transcend certain stereotypes for a foreign film or a genre film, anything that might have been relegated in the past to a smaller or older audience.”
Looking back at the strategies for some of Neon’s releases pre- and post pandemic, Federoff noted that Parasite was released on video on demand at the time the Oscar nominations were announced (having steadily built a presence beforehand in theatres for many months). “It was on VoD and in the theatres at the same time, but still managed to go from $27m to $53m [at the box office],” said Federoff. “That really points to how much people watch their content the way they want to watch it and shows that home entertainment and theatrical can both live side by side.”
She said that windows collapsed during the pandemic, but that Neon “is no stranger to collapsed windows - we have been doing this for years. We strongly feel that every single film deserves its own kind of campaign and its own kind of release.”
“Some films like Parasite or Honeyland need 180 days in the theatres, and then there are other films that are faster runs, ones where the audiences really do come out on day one.”
Michael Sarnoski’s Nicolas Cage-starring drama Pig, for example, was released in June 2021 with the window being reduced from 90 days to 17 days. The same strategy was followed last autumn for Neon’s release of Titane into 500 theatres followed by the home entertainment launch 17 days later.
According to Federoff, studies show that 90% of a film’s audience comes to the cinemas in the first two weeks.
Looking to the future, Federoff suggested that Neon is now looking to move into production and development and being involved in projects at a much earlier stage.
“For smaller companies like ours, it is the only way to survive against the streamers and the bigger studios. We need to own our IP and need to own the world,” she said. “We need to be able to control all of those things in order to maximise what we can make off of it and we need to be able to use our smart spend in the best way possible.”
“If we are just going to acquire a film for one territory alone, then, first off, it’s really hard to compete as there are a lot of people with a lot more money who can throw it in a nonsensical way at films.”
“The other reason for wanting to own the worldwide rights is that we can then control the full campaign of the film so that the marketing around the world can be ours.”
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