Toronto Kicks Off Battle of the Fall Film Markets

With the beginning of the 2024 Toronto Movie Pageant, the primary shot has been fired in a battle for supremacy within the fall movie markets. Toronto will formally launch its new market in 2026, with the assistance of an eight-figure sum from the Canadian authorities, and the bottom is being laid to make TIFF a contender, even perhaps a substitute, for the present reigning fall champ, the American Movie Market.

The AFM has appeared wobbly and susceptible for the reason that closure of the Loews resort in Santa Monica final 12 months. The long-lasting Pacific-facing location had been house to the AFM since 1991, and AFM’s transfer up the hill to the Le Méridien Delfina for the 2023 market proved a catastrophe. Members of the hospitality employees union Unite Right here Native 11 staged a loud and disruptive protest outdoors the constructing, decrying what they mentioned had been unfair working circumstances on the resort. Inside, market attendees had been pissed off by amenities not designed to accommodate a whole bunch of patrons and sellers shifting out and in and thru the constructing daily. AFM organizers, The Impartial Movie & Tv Alliance (IFTA), shortly dropped the concept of returning there this 12 months. As a substitute, the AFM has pulled up stakes and moved to the Palm On line casino Resort in Las Vegas for its forty fifth version, set to happen Nov. 5-10.

“With the transfer to Vegas, AFM is in limbo a bit of bit, nobody is aware of if it’s going to work,” notes one worldwide movie gross sales exec, a 20-year movie market veteran. “TIFF sees a chance to take AFM’s spot as the primary movie marketplace for the autumn.”

Toronto has lengthy been a spot to do enterprise, with patrons and sellers organising store within the metropolis’s downtown motels and negotiating offers. Sony Photos Classics kicked off the deal-making on the eve of TIFF 2024, with SPC nabbing key world rights to Laura Piani’s debut function Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Lionsgate’s Grindstone Leisure Group and Roadside Sights took U.S. rights to Dito Montiel-directed Riff Raff, and Amazon Prime Video snatched up all worldwide rights, excluding Germany, for the sci-fi function The Evaluation, starring Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, and Himesh Patel, all forward of their respective pageant premieres.

In 2022, TIFF examined the waters for a proper market with its Business Selects program, a collection of screenings for movies outdoors the pageant’s official lineup the place worldwide rights had been accessible. Whereas TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey insists the brand new Toronto market won’t be in competitors with the AFM — “I believe the AFM leans towards a extra purely business product; we’ve the type of pageant grade,” he instructed THR, including there’s sufficient time “between Cannes and Toronto and between Toronto and the AFM” to permit corporations to attend all three markets with new initiatives.

Gross sales corporations aren’t so positive the expense of attending yet one more movie market is price it.
Home summer time theatrical income, at $3.67 billion in accordance with Comscore estimates, was off 10 % from final 12 months, and impartial hits have been few and much between, Neon’s Longlegs ($74 million home) and A24’s Civil Struggle ($68 million) however.

“The marketplace for indie movies is hard,” notes a London-based vendor attending TIFF this 12 months. “The streamers are pulling again, there are solely a handful of impartial distributors who can put up an actual MG [minimum guarantee], so there’s not a lot wiggle room in the case of prices.”

As TIFF strikes towards a proper market, cost-conscious indie patrons and sellers are discovering extra informal methods to do enterprise. The Venice Movie Pageant, which doesn’t have a movie market, noticed a number of high-profile U.S. offers, with A24 choosing up rights to Luca Guadagnino’s new movie Queer, starring Daniel Craig, from CAA Media Finance, Netflix nabbing Angelina Jolie-starring Maria Callas biopic Maria from FilmNation and Metrograph Photos buying Neo Sora’s narrative function debut Happyend from Enlarge.

“For us, Venice has grow to be extra like Toronto was once,” says one European vendor. “We’re taking conferences in our resort, speaking informally with our patrons and doing offers. All with out spending cash on a sales space or a trans-Atlantic flight.”