The stirring Nat Turner biopic The Birth of a Nation went to Fox Searchlight for $17.5-million (U.S.), which is the most any studio has ever spent for a festival film.
A year ago at the Sundance Film Festival, an intense bidding war broke out for the rights to distribute audience favourites Dope and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. When the dust cleared, the former landed at Open Road, and the latter at Fox Searchlight. But neither movie became a box-office sensation. The fest's biggest 2015 hit turned out to be Brooklyn, which Fox Searchlight bought with so little fanfare that even now it hardly seems like "a Sundance film."
At this year's festival, much of the talk in the lobby and in the lines has been about two other huge sales – each historic. The stirring Nat Turner biopic The Birth of a Nation went to Fox Searchlight for $17.5-million (U.S.), which is the most any studio has ever spent for a festival film. And while it only cost Amazon $10-million to pick up writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's tear-jerking family drama Manchester by the Sea, the streaming service's unprecedented high bid also made jaws drop.
Both The Birth of a Nation and Manchester by the Sea are excellent films. But even if they were mediocre, what they cost and who paid the bill would still say a lot about the state of a movie business in transition.
The enormousness of the Birth of a Nation sale should be encouraging, and not just because writer-director-star Nate Parker deserved to be rewarded for so superbly realizing a dream project. Fox's investment in the violent, tragic story of an 1830s slave revolt may also mean that Hollywood's learned something from the recent diversity controversies, coupled with the box-office success of films such as Straight Outta Compton and Creed. Simply put: Black movies matter.
It's harder to grasp the meaning of Amazon buying Manchester, because no one's ever seen anything like it. For its investment, the online retailer gets exclusive streaming rights for its Prime service, and a say in when and how the movie is distributed theatrically. Whether that money will be well spent remains a tricky question.
Manchester by the Sea is a magnificent motion picture, featuring a career-best performance by Casey Affleck as a moody working-class Bostonian who moves back to his hometown to handle his brother's estate. But while the film has moments of humour and a strong emotional payoff, it's also long and meandering. In today's superhero-saturated market, Manchester will have to catch a lot of breaks to earn $10-million at the multiplex.
Maybe Amazon believes the movie's worth $10-million in new subscribers, though. Or maybe the company's just extending its brand, thinking Manchester will fit well alongside its award-winning original TV series Transparent.
If so, that would fit the pattern of Amazon and its chief competitor Netflix's Sundance buys this year. The two streaming giants were by far the biggest players in the market, with their preferences tending toward the arty.
Amazon grabbed Todd Solondz's sad, sour comedy Wiener-Dog, along with Whit Stillman's quirky Jane Austen adaptation Love & Friendship, the enigmatic Rachel Weisz/Michael Shannon vehicle Complete Unknown and the absorbing literary documentary Author: The JT Leroy Story. Netflix took the star-studded indie dramas Tallulah and The Fundamentals of Caring, as well as the wonderfully scary, politically angry Iranian horror film Under the Shadow.
None of those sales, most reportedly in the mid-seven-figure range, were as splashy as the one for Manchester by the Sea. But cumulatively they show the streaming services' commitment to quality. The same subscribers who binge on the likes of Orange Is the New Black and Making a Murderer may be the ideal audience for Sundance's edgier fare.
Since neither Netflix nor Amazon reveal much hard data about viewers or subscribers, it will be difficult to gauge the ultimate value of these deals. But for film buffs who can't afford to attend festivals and don't live in big cities, the spending spree could be good news. It will mean they'll get to see some of Sundance's highest-profile films much sooner, well before they get access to buzz titles that landed at smaller distributors such as Oscilloscope (which has the excellent coming-of-age sketch The Fits) or The Orchard (which took Taika Waititi's crowd-pleasing New Zealand comedy-adventure Hunt for the Wilderpeople).
That said, there's something mildly worrisome about world-class cinema becoming mere "content," to be browsed through idly by people sitting in their living rooms. According to the Hollywood Reporter, that's partly why Parker turned down a $20-million offer from Netflix for The Birth of a Nation – that, and the fact that Fox Searchlight is more skilled at navigating the awards season, something Netflix proved it can't quite handle yet.
For those who prize the theatrical experience, though, Parker's decision is heartening. That same Hollywood Reporter article indicated the director is consulting with Fox on how best to handle his film, trying to avoid the fate of Me and Earl. The studio will be looking into special screenings for schools, and other ways to make the release more of an event.
Years from now, moviegoers may look at this year's Sundance as a pivotal moment in cinema history: when independent film faced its future, and realized that there are viable options for making money: Go big, or go home.