September 5, 2024
I’m back from my annual social media and newsletter writing vacation, and heading straight into the thick of the film world with a (very brief) trip tomorrow to the Toronto Film Festival, before a whirlwind tour of multiple Fall film festivals (which start before Fall, and it still feels like Summer in many places). Historically, this has always been the time to figure out what’s next for film – not just what (hopefully) great movies are on the horizon, but also how things are going in the business, what’s selling, are audiences showing up, and all those other concerns that have been blocked out of my mind for a month. But, I’m not sure this year’s Fall festival season is going to give us many answers.
The trades seem to think otherwise. Variety, for example, ran a piece about indie film “staging a box office comeback” that might help drive sales at TIFF. But it doesn’t take more than one paragraph to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes, as Elissa Federoff of Neon says they’d had a great year, “And that’s because we’ve taken bigger bets on bigger-budgeted films that have the potential to reach a much wider audience.” Read between the lines folks – if your film isn’t bigger budget, with bigger names and broader appeal, you are not on the buyer’s menu right now. Heck, for some buyers, that menu has one item – we heard from one buyer at a major platform just last week that their acquisition strategy, across the board, “is limited to one live action, feature length film per year.” So much for an indie film revival (to be clear, they also meant this note to exclude docs, or shorts, or animation or anything else).
While not a scientific survey, I spoke with about 3-4 distributors this week, and all of them reported that behind the scenes, none were too impressed with the line-ups at Telluride, Toronto or the other upcoming festivals. Most of them were hinting nothing was “big” enough, and they could no longer take a risk on the smaller titles because those aren’t landing with streamers, which is how they cover their risk in theaters and on TVOD, etc. I’m sure that we’ll all find some artistic gems, but many of them will be stuck with the fate of one producer I spoke with this week – their film premiered at multiple major fests, including Venice, Toronto, the NYFF and many more to come, and they couldn’t even get interest from a single sales agent. WTF?! You didn’t hear those stories too often a few years ago.
The US equity market for indie films is pretty much dead – only dumb money being spent. Pay-One windows are gone. Risk is a term used for taking a bet on a sure-fire, big movie (and where you can spend over $10M on the release, as also hinted at in that Variety article). Don’t even talk with anyone about the market for serious documentaries, because that is also gone. BUT… guess what? None of this is news – this is all pretty much the same as it’s been for over a year now, and it’s why people have said “survive til ‘25” so often that no one wants to hear that saying one more time (sorry).
I can report one bright side – I was overseas for the Locarno Film Festival in August, and things are looking much brighter in Europe. Nothing is perfect, but thanks to government support, most sectors are surviving, if not thriving. And there were many new experiments being launched, new funds being discussed, and films were getting distributed – maybe not for big sums, but those were also less necessary given the financial risk being lower thanks to those same subsidies. I guess that’s the answer – move to Europe somehow. Which is what one producer friend of mine is doing just now – giving up on the US and lining up better things overseas.
Everyone else is hoping that rich people and/or brands will bail out the US film industry. I’m not counting on either of those things happening, but I can report that business has never been brisker at Sub-Genre, and for every brand we know of that is cutting/freezing budgets, we are seeing five more entering the space. They aren’t often looking to support your indie film that could, but smart producers are tapping into this space more frequently, and the stigma of brand funding – if there ever really was one – is gone. That said, if you are one of my brand friends -beware, because 90% of those projects being pitched to you have made the rounds of Holly- and Indie-wood and been passed on already, so be prepared to pay for distribution as well as production and keep a keen nose for all the BS coming your way.
Getting back to Locarno for a moment, there was another topic of conversation over (way too many) an Aperol or Campari spritz (the official sponsor) – which of the bigger film festivals will survive, and which ones deserve to stick around? It was no secret before that many of them are struggling – financially, under new political leadership (in some countries), and with major leadership changes. But the bigger question seemed to be – which ones are going to be able to find their true purpose in a new, very changed, marketplace. And that marketplace is both an industry one, and also an audience marketplace where it’s a serious question whether these festivals are serving their current or future audiences. I think Locarno is doing a good job of thinking about this, and when you speak to the staff at the other places a few of them seem to get it, but I’m not always sure their leadership does – the status quo doesn’t just not work anymore, it doesn’t exist. Everything is up for grabs (except maybe Cannes’ status), but that also means all of them can lose their grip and fall into an abyss, and it’s no longer clear that any of the film “community” will care enough to help them find a lifeline anymore. I got asked by everyone I know (and don’t know) where I thought Sundance might land for its potential new home, but the smarter folk were asking whether they’d keep showing up anywhere, and why? (for the record, I will keep showing up).
All of this to say – my time offline didn’t give me any special insights into the future of this business, just a lot more questions. I’m hoping that reading some Fall “tea” leaves might give me – and us – more answers on what’s coming next. I somehow remain refreshed and excited for the future, but I think that’s only because I spent the last few weeks swimming and daydreaming instead of reading the trades or the social feeds, and maybe that’s the key to surviving til ’25 – bury your head in your own dreams, figure out what matters to you, because the industry has no clue.
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Film
Filmmakers Will Keep Creating Political Docs. When Will Streamers Start To Favor Them?: At the moment, the streaming giants favor celebrity and true crime series above all else, but documentary Director/Producer Alex Gibney pushes back on the notion that viewers aren’t interested in films about political topics: “Audiences want [political documentaries], but for some reason we live in a moment when [the big streamers] don’t want to allow programming that would potentially inflame or offend people.” And Gibney’s statement is backed by numbers (a handful of Frontline doc films like “20 Days in Mariupol” have amassed millions and millions of views across multiple platforms including YouTube… and yet, streamers don’t want to pick them up). Our own Brian Newman explains to Variety that “Streamers don’t want to touch things that are too political for a mix of reasons that include true censorship from other governments, self-censorship from worrying about angering other governments, especially China and India and Russia, and the shift to advertising in their models, which is creating its own form of censorship because advertisers don’t want to be placed against more political content.” He cites the removal of Matthew Heineman’s 2022 NatGeo doc “Retrograde” from all Disney’s platforms as a harrowing example of this censorship. The takeaway: Filmmakers will remain committed to making docs about current affairs. As filmmaker Dawn Porter puts it, “The issue will be, ‘What’s the way in?” Check out the full Variety piece by Addie Morfoot. (GSH)
 Cinema Audiovisual Futures Conference Videos Out Now: A few weeks ago, the Locarno Film Festival hosted The 2024 Cinema Audiovisual Futures Conference, an initiative to explore the future of cinema in the face of the societal and environmental crises that threaten humanity and the planet. You can head to their page to watch filmmakers and industry experts discuss topics including “AI and Generative Humanity,” “Digital Migration,” and “Listening to Ice" (GSH)
Consent Needed For Digital Replicas In Film & TV: AB 1836, a California digital replica bill that requires studios to get consent from dead performers’ estates in order to produce digital replicas of them passed the state Senate on August 31st. SAG-AFTRA called the bill a “legislative priority” in a statement. The bill’s passage comes just days after the CA legislature passed AB 2602 with similar consent requirements for living actors. Now, CA Governer Gavin Newsom just needs to sign it. Cynthia Littleton for Variety has the news. (GSH)
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Branded Content
Post Barbie Branded Content Push: “Barbie,” the movie, got brands excited about creating, and since its release, lots have tried to jump on the wave and replicate its success. For instance, Amazon has since debuted new branded entertainment-focused units including a “scripted hybrid” unit that focuses on branded scripted shows and The North Face came out with a short film about a farmer-family’s search for sustainability. Anjali Bal, an associate professor of marketing at Babson College sums it up nicely: “Consumers are less and less impacted by advertisements in a traditional sense of the word… What brands are struggling with right now is [giving] out authentic messaging without really coming under fire for those things. One of the things about these movies… is that then they have the ability to match their beliefs to whatever they’re sponsoring without doing so in a way that is inauthentic.” Read on at Jasmine Sheena’s piece for MarketingBrew. (GSH)
Love Island: A Land Of Abundance For Brands: Branded content is finding its home in (smutty) reality TV. Take Love Island for instance: Maybelline New York was integrated into several episodes and was “woven into the storyline as an integral part of the experience, [in] a fun and sexy way [through a kissing booth]… in a way that feels natural and organic (Karen Kovacs, president of advertising and partnerships at NBCU).” Kovacs explains that with brands being integrated into programming, “NBCUniversal is seeing a 58% higher recall as well as a 93% brand recall improvement, and a 17% lift in brand compared with the competitive genre norm, translating into higher brand KPIs for the competition reality TV genre.” Let’s hope brands can apply the same logic and similar strategies to other genres of TV and film and hopefully improve the streaming ecosystem as a whole. Read on at Saleah Blancaflor’s Adweek article. (GSH)
GSH = Articles written by Sub-Genre's Gabriel Schillinger-Hyman, not Brian Newman (BN)
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