Between $20 million for “Fair play”, eight figures for “Flora and Son”, and a large theatrical contract for “theater camp“, any handshake on the Sundance market seems a bit silly.

Major streamers and traditional theater buyers got in on the Utah action, and while there may have been less feverish late night offers, movies like “A Little Prayer” for Sony Pictures Classics or “Flora and Son” for Apple closed within about 24 hours of premiering. “Fair Play” had up to seven potential buyers before netflix reunited with his “Bridgerton” star Phoebe Dynevor. A24 already had half a dozen films at the festival, but walked away with the midnight entry “Talk to Me”, beating out a few other bidders in the process.

Independent films, in difficulty? Closing deals for many movies at Sundance seemed as fast and aggressive as ever, aggressive even before the pandemic. A source who spoke with IndieWire on condition of anonymity said that now that streamers are away from the biggest and biggest sales, there could be a few more announcements by the end of next week. for films like “Eileen,” “Magazine Dreams,” “Rotting in the Sun,” and American drama audience winner “The Persian Version”; all have multiple offers.

Along with $20 million for “Fair Play,” Netflix also nabbed Sarah Snook’s thriller “Run Rabbit Run,” while Amazon picked up Chilean horror flick “In My Mother’s Skin.” As an agent at IndieWire predicted before the festival, it remains easier and cheaper to acquire brilliant content than to create it in-house. And if a streamer is in play, you can bet they’ll all be competitive.

“Camp Theater”

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

“It looks like there’s some real activity right now around titles that seem to have a clear audience,” said Ryan Heller, executive vice president of film and documentary at Topic Studios, which produced “Theater Camp.” . “They’re all savvy and sophisticated in what they need at this point. It’s not a year where there are several new buyers coming into the market who need to fill slates, but this is nor a year when they need nothing.

With no fewer than 80 films available at the festival, that still leaves plenty on the table. The usually animated documentary market was remarkably calm. There was no ‘Boys State’, ‘Summer of Soul’ or ‘Fire of Love’ sale to speak of, all of which got bids in the mid to low eight figures.

Magnolia picked up NEXT winner “Kokomo City,” Greenwich picked “Nam June Paik: The Moon Is the Oldest TV,” and World Documentary Cinema Jury Prize winner “The Eternal Memory” found a home with MTV on Friday. after an auction that had multiple companies competing. And so far, that’s it. Even Doug Liman’s surprise documentary about Brett Kavanaugh has yet to find a buyer (although Liman joked Kavanaugh himself could bid).

Kevin Iwashina, who heads Fifth Season’s documentary division, said previous major sales in recent years have come at the perfect time and place: when streamers show up, they need to make a splash. Now streamers are patiently weighing up if and how a theatrical push could create long-term value, not to mention influence the awards race. (Four of the five documentaries in this year’s Oscar race premiered at Sundance 2022.)

Iwashina expects documentary sales to take a little longer and respectable deals to be closed in the coming weeks. “Streamers are more mature, they’re more sophisticated,” he said. “There are now concrete criteria to guide their decisions. They want to speak directly to their audience and properly support documentaries. Everyone understands that a big media company can change the course of what a less discerning eye might see as something small.

“The Eternal Memory”

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Genre stuff hasn’t faced the same challenge, with four of the five Midnight titles available (though not the only we guessed). For movies that were more dramatic and perhaps didn’t appeal to audiences on the level of a John Carney musical, they might struggle to land deals even in the next few months.

“For everything else, there was probably a miscalculation in terms of market activity,” said a distributor, adding that his company could still acquire, but probably not significantly. “I think it’s going to be a rocky road. I think it’s going to be a year of transition, consolidation, and hard work to bring theatrical audiences back into theaters, but figure out what kinds of movies are going to make it.

The distributor told IndieWire that many of the films available feel organized, however unintentionally, around themes of isolation and trauma. On more accessible titles, traditional buyers have been devalued by aggressive streamers. This distributor suspected of agents did not hesitate to conclude offers for smaller films like “A little prayer” or “Passages”.

The good news is that many distributors who would like to leave Sundance with at least one movie have yet to pounce. Among those still on the sidelines are Bleecker Street, Roadside Attractions, Utopia and IFC Films. And Neon, anyone?

“Everyone is back home, the market is going to change now and people are catching up on the titles they missed,” Heller said. “The stories about these films continue to build.”

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