By Corey Vikser
Staff Writer
Located in Park City, Utah, the Sundance Film Festival is an independent film festival designed to showcase rising filmmakers’ work and provide an auction market for potential distributors.
This year’s Sundance not only showed an economic resurgence of the festival, but a movement toward expanding distributor bases and possible changes in the industry.
Last year’s program was considered rather average when compared to its predecessors, notably missing large film purchases. This year’s lineup was aimed at bringing the audience of distributors hits and high profile acquisitions commonly associated with Sundance.
The sales on the films were also much more aggressive this year compared to its predecessor, as last year’s most expensive deal was $3.5 million for the rights to dis- tribute “The Skeleton Twins,” while offers for “Me and Earl and The Dying Girl” reached north of $12 million. The return of massive sales contradicts the possibility of the festival waning.
New distributors are also coming to Sun- dance to try to make a name for themselves. Music sales company The Orchard picked up three films at the fest, including a high $4 million deal for the Adam Scott comedy “The Overnighter.” This added variety in distributors only reaffirms the long-lasting nature of Sundance.
Netflix and Amazon were present as well in hopes of changing up the forms of distribution but to no avail. Amazon partnered with newcomer Bleecker Street Films to offer seven figures for “Brooklyn,” but it was not enough to win over the film, which ended up in the hands of Fox Searchlight.
Netflix did not leave empty-handed, scooping up amateur porn documentary “Hot Girls Wanted” for $1 million but failed to strike the kind of high-profile deal it had likely aimed for.
Most interestingly, filmmakers appeared to gain a larger voice at this year’s Sun- dance as they settle on the deals that accommodate them and ensure security for their film’s release. As new distribution methods such as Video On Demand begin to expand, competitors are still continuing to settle for more traditional deals.
For example, the comedy “The Bronze” declined a $5 million deal from Netflix, opting for $3 million and a guaranteed theatrical release from Relativity Media.
There was a lot of money going around this year’s Sundance, and the many distributors involved show that the festival will be here for a while. While digital distributors like Netflix will need to try harder to benefit, the power filmmakers appear to have over the film’s distributing rights is a pleasant sign of power moving from the financial to the creative side.
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