© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: 76th Cannes Film Festival – Opening Ceremony and Screening of “Jean de Barry” Out of Competition – Arrival of the Red Carpet – Cannes, France, May 16, 2023. Jury Members Atiq Rahimi, Julia Docorno and Robyn Ostlund, Jury Members Presden
Written by Miranda Murray
CANNES (Reuters) – Independent film companies facing an upended market with the entry of streaming services are showing some optimism on their way to this year’s Cannes Film Festival as the Netflix era begins to wind down and audiences return to cinemas after the pandemic.
While buyers are cautious about buying volumes amid a shaky global economy, they are showing up at festivals and buzzing — a trend that Todd Brown, head of international acquisitions for US XYZ Films, said he expects to continue.
Cannes may make headlines for its glitz and glamour, but as the world’s largest event for the buying and selling of film rights, its importance to the industry is unparalleled.
Approximately 12,500 industry professionals involved in the purchase, sale or production of films in some form appear on the market, with nearly 4,000 films and projects being shown and deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
With the exception of a few titles that will do well no matter what, the market is very competitive this year, said Laura Wilson, head of acquisitions at Britain-based Altitude Films.
“It doesn’t feel like a buyers’ or sellers’ market,” she said.
Both Brown and Wilson said they are betting on audiences returning to the cinema. “Ultimately, we’re hopeful about the play,” Wilson said.
This month, AMC Entertainment (NYSE: Holdings Inc) reported positive quarterly results buoyed by the Super Mario Bros. movie. The world’s largest cinema operator said it expects The Little Mermaid, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” to generate box office sales for the rest of the year.
However, Brian O’Shea, CEO of Los Angeles-based The Exchange, didn’t see much reason for optimism in the numbers.
“The box office benefiting independent films is depressed,” he said, because it was older viewers who wanted to avoid getting sick during the coronavirus pandemic and were used to watching movies from their homes.
“It’s a transitional time on the business side where the traditional business model used by independent buyers sees less value,” O’Shea said.
International film companies such as Walt Disney (NYSE:) Co, Paramount and Warner Bros. have joined the streaming revolution to counter the threat that Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:) poses to traditional TV but now faces a crowded market where competition is fierce for increasing subscriber numbers.
“Everybody really focused on the shock effect of shrinking the broadcaster…but the other thing it does for traditional theatrical distribution is a narrow focus on what broadcasters do and what kind of movie they want to do and how they want to do it, so there’s room for counter-programming for everything else,” he said. Brown.
He said the similarity of much of the content offered on streaming platforms leaves theater audiences wanting something different, an unmet appetite that independent companies can satisfy.
Proof of this argument is how well last year’s “Triangle of Sorrow” and “Joyland” did in Europe, and “Everything Everywhere at Once” in the US and around the world. “These are movies that are not movies, radically,” Brown said.
However, in one sign that streaming is focusing more on cinema in an effort to stand out from the crowd, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:) will premiere Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” starring Leonardo DiCaprio at Cannes, and it has collaborated with Paramount to release the film in theaters ahead of its worldwide broadcast in October.
“Something good is happening, and I’m sure other streaming services will follow suit,” Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Frémaux said in an interview with Le Film francais in April.