With the Toronto Int. Film Festival just a couple of weeks away, the stars, publicists, journalists, critics and bloggers are getting hotels, meetings and film screenings into place. That said, writers still need something to do until the actual screenings start, so why not a purely speculative piece on how the recession is keeping buyers away from some of the most anticipated films at TIFF?
In a report by Guy Dixon at Canada’s The Globe & Mail, he points out that about a hundred films, including Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans”; Atom Egoyan’s “Chloe” and Neil Jordan’s “Ondine” will be screening without distribution deals in place (at least not officially). Claiming that studios are more cash-strapped than ever, Dixon implies that unless the films make a big splash, buyers are going to be staying away.
Well, he’s right and wrong. While there are generally one or two films that come out of any festival with all the buzz, buyers aren’t just in town to snag the next “Slumdog Millionaire.” We agree that buyers are probably going to be on a shorter financial leash, but the wait and see approach is more of a negotiating tactic than anything else. If an anticipated film turns out earning critical indifference, buyers will still circle it, save an extra million or two and use the leftover to pick up something else as well (or put it towards the films that do earn kudos from audiences and press).
Last year, “Che” grabbed a lot of headlines when it spent months without a North American distribution deal in place after premiering at Cannes. Despite an award for Benicio del Toro in the role as the iconic revolutionary, studios were wary of a four-hour, foreign language film, and we can understand their reluctance. The same thing happened to the seemingly viable Terry Gilliam picture, “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” which contains a posthumous performance by the departed Heath Ledger, plus appearances by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law. It screened at Cannes this spring, but didn’t find a deal until earlier this month.
That said, none of the films mentioned by Dixon come close to being saddled with those kinds of “problems.” We have no doubt that the films mentioned in Dixon’s piece will find distribution deals by the end of TIFF. Or put it another way, no buyer is going to get back on a flight to Los Angeles and tell their boss they decided not to bring back a film with Nicholas Cage and Eva Mendes or Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson. The truth of the matter is, studios still need movies to fill the pipeline, and while the days of treating every director in town to mimosa breakfasts may be over, films will still be purchased if the price is right.
If you are a buyer and interested, IOnCinema has written up a long, impressive list of all the films appearing at TIFF that so far, have no distribution. The biggest travesty so far to us is Bong Joon-Ho’s “Mother,” which is excellent and screened at Cannes earlier this year, but still has no buyer. It already beat out Park Chan-Wook’s “Thirst” to represent Korea at the Oscars this year in the Best Foreign Film category for crying out loud! If it doesn’t sell during TIFF there is something deeply wrong with this world.