CUTTING THE DECK
Jonathan Bing on indie film dealmaking.
In 1999, Park City, Utah, was the site of two acquisition deals that rocked the distribution business with the force of a major earthquake. Miramax allegedly shattered a festival acquisitions record, spending a reported $11 million to win a heated auction for Mark Illsley’s comedy of crooks in drag, Happy, Texas. Across town, Artisan paid $1 million for an obscure, microbudgeted horror film directed by Eduardo Sanchéz and Daniel Myrick. Happy, Texas later grossed a mere $2 million, while the Sanchéz and Myrick feature, The Blair Witch Project, has entered the annals of Hollywood history as the most successful independent film ever.
Two years later the distribution business is a welter of contradictions. The acquisitions market is depressed, and, despite millions spent on distribution and marketing, few independently produced films outgross Happy, Texas, much less Blair Witch. "The amount of money people are compelled to pay to get their films out is staggering," says Shooting Gallery Pictures president Eamon Bowles. "The average studio pays $25 million to market their film. How do you survive in that sea?"
To make matters worse, Miramax, now focused on in-house productions like Chocolat and All the Pretty Horses, is no longer the high-rolling festival buyer it once was. Last year at Sundance, Miramax head Harvey Weinstein’s health was cited as the reason the company didn’t buy a film; their activity this year should send a clearer signal as to whether the company is largely out of the acquisitions game.
On the other hand, every studio now has an "independent film" label looking for its own Blair Witch. What sets these studio labels apart from old independent distributors, though, is their diminishing interest in finished, fully financed films. Nowadays, says Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker, specialty distributors are trying to get in at the ground floor. "When we started Sony Pictures Classics in 1992, companies like Fine Line, Miramax and Gramercy were acquisitions-driven companies," he says. "Now more companies are investing in films at the script stage."
The effect of that trend on the festival circuit has been enormous. Distributors who once saw Sundance or Toronto mainly as places to go prospecting for new acquisitions now use them as glitzy launching pads for their own produced films. That has given the festivals even more of a Hollywood aura, making it harder for quiet, challenging films to get the attention of distributors. "Independent distributors are exceedingly lazy," says Jeff Lipsky, president of Lot 47 Releasing. "They want the media to do their work for them, and the media want the festivals to do their work for them."
However, with the diminishing acquisitions market may come new opportunities at Sundance this year. Internet distribution, straight-to-video acquisitions by the major video chains, complex split-rights deals and remake-rights purchases may replace the holy grail that was once theatrical distribution. With these deals comes the need for a veteran sales agent or lawyer who can crunch numbers and negotiate their complex terms. Before the indie boom hit, says attorney John Sloss, "filmmakers weren’t as savvy. They were just going for advances and not thinking of the back end."
If studio executives are buying fewer festival entrees, they’re still shopping for talent on the festival circuit, often in the form of directors like Darren Aronofsky, next directing a Batman movie for Warners, or Bryan Singer, who has left Sundance behind to make pictures like The X-Men. Their careers serve as examples of the spoils available to certain independent directors, even if the distribution of their early work fails to scratch the national market. As Bowles puts it, "Hollywood is interested in who can supervise a $70-million trainwreck."
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