Cannes. Those words alone instantly conjure images of movie gods and goddesses in haute couture ascending the red-carpeted steps of the Palais amid flashbulb lights and the screams of thousands of fans. However, as the festival enters its 79th year, there are fewer stars at Cannes than in previous years, and major studios are absent from the festival.
Neither summer blockbusters like Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” or Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” nor predicted Hollywood awards contenders like Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Digger” or David Fincher’s “Cliff Booth” will appear on the Cote d’Azur. Instead, international writers like Christian Mungiu (The Fjords), Paweł Pawlikowski (The Fatherland) and Nicolas Winding Refn (Her Private Hell) will provide the heat.
The reasons for the decline in presence are complex. In some cases, major U.S. films were not completed in time for release. Nor did they see the point in studios spending millions of dollars to promote a film that might not be released in theaters for months and be savagely booed by France’s notoriously harsh critics.
“Cannes is the year’s premier showcase for foreign language films,” says John Sloss, founder and veteran sales agent at Cinetic Media. “It’s always been a challenge for American awards films because of where they sit on the calendar.”
But Cannes is not completely without glamor. It helps that some foreign films, such as Mungiu’s Fjord and Refn’s Her Private Hell, have starred Sebastian Stan, Charles Melton and Sandra Hüller, and the festival’s jury is proud of Demi Moore.
Studio executives may not have to pack up their gowns and tuxedos for the big premiere, but they’ll still be heading to the south of France to secure titles to fill their 2026 and 2027 schedules. After all, Cannes is more than just a festival. It’s also an active market, with distributors sifting through projects in various stages of development, from completed films to packages that include scripts and talent that still need to be shot. This year, we have a list of buzzy projects that look promising on paper. They range from shallow action flicks like John Doe, the latest testosterone-fueled release from Jason Statham and David Ayer’s Beekeeper team, to high-end films like the multi-generational tale A Woman in the Sun, starring Oscar winners Renée Zellweger and Sissy Spacek, and the World War II thriller The Passenger, co-starring Jeremy Strong and The Girl with the Girl. The Needle, directed by Magnus von Horn.
The question is how much money studios, especially indie players, are willing to spend, given how long the theatrical market is taking to recover from the coronavirus. But with domestic box office revenue up more than 20% year over year thanks to hits like “Michael” and “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” things may finally be turning a corner.
“Despite the fact that many independent films are doing well and are generating box office revenue, there is a lot of anxiety in the world,” said Oliver Berben, CEO of Constantin Film AG.
Barben, who recently returned from CinemaCon, an annual trade show for movie theater owners held in Las Vegas last month, believes attitudes could improve.
“After many months, we can finally feel the positive vibes for the film industry,” Barben said.
Some distribution players argue that the problem is that wealth is not evenly distributed. While there have been hits from both independent and major studios, failures far outnumber successes. What’s even more troubling is that the gap between a smash and a dud is wider than ever. For example, recent indies like “Christie” and “Dead Man’s Wire” failed to top $4 million worldwide, despite starring stars like Sidney Sweeney and Bill Skarsgård.
“It’s becoming more binary,” said Kent Sanderson, CEO of Bleecker Street Media. “Either something really connects with audiences or it doesn’t. The overall market is better than it was a year ago, but it’s driven by movies that do well. And the movies that don’t do well, they really don’t do well.”
Distributors and sales agents believe that the audience for movies, especially art films, is changing. Historically, this type of film appealed to older moviegoers who loved Merchant Ivory-style, stiff-upper-lipped drama. Post-pandemic, these ticket buyers avoided multiplexes, replaced by an emerging generation of moviegoers who made hits like “Marty Supreme,” “Longlegs” and “The Materialist” and worshiped A24 and the neon altar.
“As audiences get younger, specialty films are becoming more genre-oriented,” said Scott Schuman, director of independent film companies. “They like mashups. They don’t like their movies to fit into a box. They want something unique with a story that feels fresh.”
Producers are getting the message. Manifest Pictures, a new company launched this year by former Miramax and WME Independent sales executives Yvette Zhuang and Zach Glueck, will be exhibiting at Cannes for the first time. The content reflects the industry’s attempt to crack the Gen Z code, with projects such as folk horror “A Body in the Woods,” led by Emma Roberts, and erotic thriller “Bull,” starring Dylan O’Brien, Lewis Pullman and Kaia Gerber.
“We’re responding to the box office success of films like ‘The Housemaid’ and ‘Wuthering Heights,'” Zhuang says. “Modern audiences are hungry for this kind of content. They want something that’s very loud, very lively, and has scenes that have a huge cultural impact, like “White Lotus” or “Saltburn.”
“You have to get people excited,” Glueck said. “We need people to come out of the theater and text their friends and say, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t know if you were planning on going to the theater this weekend, but you should see this.'”
Then there’s the fact that the people who decide whether to buy a movie are changing along with the audience. New distributors are coming in, including Black Bear, which backed “The Christie” and Guy Ritchie’s new thriller “In the Grey,” and Sumerian Pictures, which pulled the critically acclaimed drama “Josephine,” starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan, out of Sundance.
“There are more distributors than I can remember, and their health will depend on the box office success of independent films overall,” says one veteran sales agent. “The survival rate for these companies is not high.”
Indeed, Low-K, which launched last summer and spent heavily to buy Dead Man’s Wire from the Toronto Film Festival, the Maud Apatow romantic comedy Poetic License and the reboot Cliffhanger, is already battling reports that its finances are in turmoil.
On the major studio side, the situation is more fluid than ever. Disney’s purchase of most of 21st Century Fox in 2019 has already removed one major buyer from the board, and Paramount’s current deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery could make triggering a bidding war even more difficult.
“Consolidation is playing a role,” admits Sarah Bernstein, president of Imagine Documentaries, who is in Cannes to promote the Ron Howard documentary “Avedon.” “Fees are lower than they were a few years ago,” she adds, calling it a “condensed market.”
“Avedon” is one of the few films to be screened at the festival and aiming for distribution, along with “The Man, I Love,” directed by Ira Sachs, a drama about gay life in New York in the 1980s, and “Coward,” directed by Lucas Dhondt, a drama about World War I. But most of the most prominent films in the festival’s lineup arrive with distributors, from Pedro Almodovar’s Bitter Christmas to Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales. Neon, who has won a record six consecutive Palme d’Ors, has little chance left. The company plans to screen nine films at the festival, ranging from Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden” to Na Hong-jin’s “Hope” and James Gray’s “Paper Tiger.”
“The streak is an interesting thing to happen, but I’m sure there are a lot of movies this year that people are really excited about, whether they win a Palme or not,” said Jeff Deutchman, Neon’s president of acquisitions, production and development. “I’m very happy to win the Palme d’Or. There’s a huge spotlight on movies, but what we’ve seen in recent years is that some films that don’t win have had a very good life as well.”
