Rev up your DeLorean and check that old flux capacitor because Cannes 2023 is looking like a trip back to the future.
After the disruption and near devastation brought on by the COVID pandemic, and concerns that the rising tide of global streamers would wash away the business model of independent film distributors worldwide, buyers and sellers arrive on the Croisette this year on a wave of good (ish) news on the return of the theatrical business and a bumper crop of big movies, both blockbuster-y and arthouse-esque, up for sale at the Marché.
“The box office in North America is back up pretty close [to pre-pandemic levels],” notes Rob Carney, vp of sales at FilmNation, referencing first-quarter figures that showed domestic revenues of $1.8 billion, just 25 percent off the record highs of 2019. Gross box office in the European Union (EU) and the U.K. last year, as reported by the European Audiovisual Observatory, was up 70 percent from the 2021 figures, to $5.6 billion, though still 28 percent down from average pre-pandemic levels.
“Internationally, theatrical in some places has recovered faster than others, but I think we’re going to have a very healthy market for the projects we’re bringing, which is reflective of more optimism around the theatrical business,” said Carney.
FilmNation’s Cannes slate ranges from the clearly commercial — Nicolas Cage starrer Lords of War, a sequel to 2005 hit Lord of War, with Cage reprising his performance as a conflicted international arms dealer; Stephen King horror adaptation The Life of Chuck starring Tom Hiddleston and Mark Hamill — to the most specialist Voyagers, a romantic biopic from Gloria Bell director Sebastián Lelio with Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones playing celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan and his collaborator and partner TV producer Ann Druyan.
“There’s a lot of range in what’s working, the scope is huge,” notes FilmNation sales vp Alice Lafille. “But I think the projects that distinguish themselves on the market are the ones that are clearly theatrical propositions, clearly different from films one can just as easily watch at home.”
One thing that has meant is that stars are back in style. Talent with a built-in fan-bases and a track record at the box office — Cage, Keanu Reeves, Diana Keaton, Florence Pugh, Mark Wahlberg — as well as fast-rising next-gen names — Eiza González, Bella Ramsey, Zar Amir-Ebrahimi, Daisy Edgar-Jones — have seen their stock value soar as buyers return their focus to filling theaters, not supplying streamers.
This year’s Cannes could even see the return of one-time global box office champ Johnny Depp, who will not only be walking Cannes’ red carpet for the Maïwenn-directed opening night film, Jeanne du Barry, in which he stars as King Louis XV, but will also be hustling at the Marché, meeting with buyers to pitch his upcoming directorial effort, Modigliani, a biopic of Italian Amedeo Modigliani that stars Riccardo Scamarcio, Pierre Niney, and Al Pacino.
A shift in strategy by the international streamers, which has seen Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and others buy fewer independent films and show a greater willingness to share rights with local distributors instead of buying up the whole world, has “created a space for independent buyers,” says Todd Brown, a partner and head of acquisitions at genre specialist XYZ Films. “There’s now a clear demarcation [the streamers] have got a pretty clear fence around what kind of content they want, which leaves a space for the independents to counter-program and provide an alternative to what the streamers are doing.”
XYZ is using Cannes to launch a new slate, New Visions, of “outside the box” international genre movies — including Pakistani horror movie In Flames, Czech science fiction title Restore Point and Irish folk horror All You Need Is Death — targeting just like kind of counter-programming.
“I’d be afraid, in this market, of trying a conventional crime thriller, or most rom-coms or a non cast-y mainline comedy, because the streamers are doing all that at a very high level, with very high-level casts in multiple languages,” says Brown. “But there’s still a lot of room around that for other things.”
Read More: World News | Entertainment News | Celeb News
Hollywood
