Toronto’s So-So Sales Bode Ill For Future Market

Measured against recent Toronto Film Festivals, business at TIFF 2024, which wrapped on September 15, was average.

There was one big studio deal: Paramount Pictures snatching up worldwide rights outside of Germany-speaking Europe for Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, a newsroom thriller on the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attacks, which is already being touted a major awards contender. There were a handful of indie pickups, with A24 nabbing Brady Corbet’s buzzy period epic The Brutalist and Andrew DeYoung’s bro-com Friendship starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd, and Samuel Goldwyn Films taking North American rights to Nick Hamm’s Medieval actioner William Tell starring Claes Bang. And there was a major streaming acquisition as Hulu snatched up TIFF opener Nutcrackers, a family comedy from David Gordon Green featuring Ben Stiller.

There were also a few deals inked ahead of the festival, with Sony Pictures Classics scooping up key world rights to Laura Piani’s debut feature Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, Lionsgate’s Grindstone Entertainment Group and Roadside Attractions taking U.S. rights to Dito Montiel’s crime comedy Riff Raff, starring Jennifer Coolidge, Pete Davidson and Bill Murray, Amazon Prime doing an international deal, excluding Germany, for the sci-fi feature The Assessment, starring Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, and Himesh Patel.

But measured against TIFF’s ambitions — in 2026 Toronto will launch a formal film market, aiming to become a hub for the indie deal-making comparable to Berlin or Cannes — business this year was slow, worryingly slow. Several high-profile titles — including Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, a Stephen King adaptation starring Tom Hiddleston, the surprise winner of TIFF’s people’s choice award for best film, and Ron Howard’s star-studded dystopian drama Eden (which features Jude Law, Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas and Daniel Brühl) — were still searching for deals as the festival wrapped.

The supply of mainstream dramas and comedies with big-name casts — David Mackenzie’s espionage thriller Relay starring Lily James and Riz Ahmed, Peter Cattaneo’s The Penguin Lessons with Steve Coogan and Jonathan Pryce, Samir Oliveros’ The Luckiest Man in America featuring Paul Walter Hauser, David Straithairn and Maisie Williams — is outstripping demand from domestic buyers, who remain cautious as they wait for box office results to return to pre-COVID levels.

“There are really only three domestic buyers that can deliver a wide release: Lionsgate, A24 and Neon,” notes an executive from a leading European financier and sales outfit. “If they say no, you’re out of luck.”

Tellingly, all the TIFF deals this year were for finished films, with no major pre-sales for packages announced. Those pre-sales — where distributors taking bets on projects with a director and cast attached that are still searching for financing — are the lifeblood of any major market. It’s the demands of the international buyers, not the domestic, that drive the pre-sale business and here TIFF attendees see a disconnect, with too many U.S. dramas and comedy titles on offer and too few movies of the kind international distributors are hungry for.

“The international buyers tell us over and over again: ‘Give us action movies, we want action!’” notes one U.S. producer/financier. “But too few of these are getting made.”

The more optimistic at TIFF point to positive trends in the U.S. distribution business. Neon is coming off a record year, thanks to the $74 million-plus box office smash that is Longlegs, and A24, buoyed by Civil War ($68 million), The Iron Claw ($19 million) and MaXXXine ($15 million), is becoming increasingly ambitious. Arthouse streamer Mubi will this week make its first big push into U.S. theatrical market with the Sept. 20 bow of Coralie Fargeat’s gory horror satire The Substance, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.

“The studios aren’t making these movies, the mid-budget elevated genre films, anymore, but there is an audience for them,” notes a London-based sales exec. “If Toronto can position itself as the place to find those kinds of films, it has a future as a real market.”