Cannes 2009: Despite small deals, outlook remains cloudy
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This evening’s forecast for the Cannes Film Festival called for rain, and as cool winds swept along the Croisette throughout the early morning, the weather felt consistent with the chilly market conditions on the festival’s first full day.
As the festival opened with a standing-ovation screening for the Pixar-Disney animated film “Up” Wednesday night (followed by a jam-packed party on the beach), a number of distribution pacts for some smaller films were announced. But even though more than half a dozen deals were closed, they didn’t necessarily mean the Cannes sales floodgates were opening.
IFC Films announced today that it was buying ‘The Red Riding Trilogy,’ a series of films based on a British serial killler called the Yorkshire Ripper in the 1970s and 1980s. As was previously announced, Sony Pictures Classics is buying two Cannes titles (“The White Ribbon” and “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky”), Chicago’s tiny Music Box Films picked up “North Face” and “Cloud 9,’ distributor Bob Berney’s as-yet-unnamed new company bought “Bright Star” while IFC Films acquired “Tales from the Golden Age.”
Yet just as noteworthy are the films that haven’t yet sold. Even though James Ivory’s “The City of Your Final Destination” with Anthony Hopkins and Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” with the late Heath Ledger have not screened in their official Cannes slots, both films have been shown to American distributors without any announced deals. The reports have been equally cautious from the Cannes film market, where about 4,500 movies in various stages of production are searching for buyers.
One of the key problems has been the collapse of worldwide DVD sales. Whereas revenue in the United States has leveled off, international returns are actually declining -- with sales from Europe, the Middle East and Africa falling from $17.8 billion in 2004 to $16.2 billion in 2007. Income from last year is expected to be down as well.
At the same time, it costs more and more to release films theatrically, and without the guaranteed sales from ancillary markets like home video, a theatrical release might no longer be a loss leader but the first shovels into an early grave. That makes in-between titles -- movies that might be too commercial to be an art film and those too artsy to be a commercial film -- the trickiest of all.
“Independent movies that are accessible and commercially minded can actually be harder to sell,” says sales agent Andrew Herwitz of the Film Sales Co. In the Cannes market, Herwitz is trying to land a distributor for “Serious Moonlight,” a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan, Kristen Bell, Justin Long and Timothy Hutton. At the same time, Herwitz says that “when you have a hot movie that everybody wants, it’s a very short conversation.”
Today’s highest-profile movies looking for a distributor are the French-Chinese co-production “Spring Fever” and the British-Dutch effort “Fish Tank.” By the time the wet weather improves, perhaps both will have a sunny future.
-- John Horn
