Will In-Person Premieres Spark Sales?

As dealmakers descend on Park City for the first proper Sundance market since 2019 (the fest is technically a hybrid event this year), sellers are hoping the magic of theatrical premieres and audience enthusiasm can help jump-start a sales environment tha

2023-01-18 - By MIA GALUPPO

It’s been three years since Hollywood touched down in Park City for the Sundance Film Festival, with the 2023 fest offering a hybrid format of both in-person and online attendance after two years of purely digital incarnations.

While the virtual festivals still produced major sales — 2021’s CODA being the most noteworthy — the overall market has lagged, with dealmaking continuing into the months after the close of the festival and mid-range deals becoming scarcer. Sellers are particularly excited for the return of in-person premieres, hoping that this will mean a return to urgency, if not a return to all-night bidding wars.

Erik Feig, the head of Picturestart (producer and financier of last year’s Cha Cha Real Smooth, which Apple grabbed for $15 million), says the film could have benefited from a proper screening in Park City: “Apple took [the movie] to SXSW, and that was the first time that we were able to see it in that environment with a festival audience,” he recalls. “It played through the roof, and it’s funny because [an Apple rep] leaned over and said, ‘You know, we would’ve paid more if we saw it like this.’ I was like, ‘Thanks for telling me that.’ ”

Here are this year’s titles that are sure to entice buyers, whether they are sitting in the Eccles or on their couch at home.

Eileen

DIRECTOR William Oldroyd

STARS Anne Hathaway, Thomasin McKenzie

BUZZ The director’s anticipated follow-up to 2016’s Florence Pugh starrer Lady Macbeth is an adaptation of the Ottessa Moshfegh novel about the relationship between a prison counselor (Hathaway) and a young secretary (McKenzie) in 1964 Massachusetts.

SALES WME Independent, Fifth Season

The Eternal Memory

DIRECTOR Maite Alberdi

BUZZ The director behind the Oscarnominated 2020 doc The Mole Agent is back with a film featuring Augusto, one of Chile’s most prominent cultural commentators, who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and Paulina, his partner of 25 years and now caretaker. SALES UTA Independent Film

Group, Submarine

Fairyland

DIRECTOR Andrew Durham

STARS Scoot McNairy

BUZZ Based on Alysia Abbott’s 2013 memoir,

this period film set in 1970s San Francisco centers on the relationship between a young daughter and a single father (McNairy) who is exploring his art and sexuality all while navigating the challenges of parenting. Sofia Coppola produces.

SALES UTA Independent Film Group, Gersh

Flora and Son

DIRECTOR John Carney

STARS Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eve Hewson BUZZ Sixteen years after his Once premiered at Sundance (and landed a best original song Oscar), Carney returns with this drama about a single mother who rediscovers her love of music.

SALES WME Independent

Going Varsity in Mariachi

DIRECTORS Alejandra Vasquez, Sam Osborn BUZZ The best of sports and music documentaries comes together in this look at competitive scholastic mariachi, which traces the highs and lows of one South Texas high school and the students’ enigmatic music coach.

SALES Fifth Season

Magazine Dreams

DIRECTOR Elijah Bynum

STARS Jonathan Majors

BUZZ Majors portrays an amateur bodybuilder who sacrifices his health — both mental and physical — to pursue his dream of superstardom in this Dramatic Competition title.

SALES CAA Media Finance

The Persian Version

DIRECTOR Maryam Keshavarz

STARS Layla Mohammadi

BUZZ With shades of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, this dramedy follows Iranian American

New Yorker Leila (Mohammadi), whose life is turned upside down when her extended family descends on NYC for her father’s heart transplant.

SALES UTA Independent Film Group

The Pod Generation

DIRECTOR Sophie Barthes

STARS Emilia Clarke, Chiwetel Ejiofor

BUZZ This sci-fi title, which has already earned buzz as a contender for the fest’s Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize — given to titles that focus on science or technology as a theme (Kogonada’s Colin Farrell starrer After Yang won last year) — takes place in a near future in which pregnancies happen via detachable wombs.

SALES CAA Media Finance

Shortcomings

DIRECTOR Randall Park

STARS Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola

BUZZ Fresh Off the Boat star Park makes his feature directing debut with this graphic-novel adaptation about an aspiring Asian American filmmaker in Oakland whose girlfriend moves to New York, leaving him to figure out his life. SALES WME Independent, UTA

Independent Film Group