For a few hours over the weekend, the Toronto Film Festival looked like its old self — a wild game of “Let’s Make a Deal.” After Chris Rock’s “Top Five” premiered on Saturday night to ecstatic reviews, at least three studios entered a horse race to scoop up the comedy. The bidding ballooned to $12.5 million for worldwide distribution, and Paramount Pictures landed the prize. But after the dust settled, Toronto went back to business as usual: small deals where the studios kicked tires and looked more like picky homebuyers in a slow economic market.
In the process, the festival illustrated just how difficult the indie business has become in a blockbuster-obsessed Hollywood. Being gun-shy may turn out to make more financial sense. Last year’s most prominent deals, a group that included “Begin Again” starring Keira Knightley and “What If” with Daniel Radcliffe, never fully ignited at the box office. Only the sci-fi pic “Oculus,” with its $27.7 million gross, managed to effectively find an audience.
Despite the warm September nights, the Toronto Film Festival still felt cold, unable to keep up the momentum from Sundance and Cannes, where the dollars flowed more freely. A cluster of films landed critical praise — among the favorites were “The Theory of Everything,” “Nightcrawler,” “St. Vincent” and the popcorn thriller “The Drop” – but there were no clear homeruns on the level of last year’s “12 Years a Slave,” “Gravity” or “Dallas Buyers Club.”
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At parties and industry events, talk often shifted the upcoming New York Film Festival, which will see the premieres of two films, David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice,” that will arrive with the kind of pent-up anticipation that was often absent at Toronto.
With few clear acquisition targets, buyers were cautious of taking big risks. The Weinstein Co., which was out in full force with “St. Vincent” and “The Imitation Game,” only picked up smaller films through its Radius arm: Chris Evans’ directorial debut “Before We Go,” “The Last Five Years,” starring Anna Kendrick and “Adult Beginners” with Rose Byrne and Nick Kroll. Sony Pictures Classics, which came to Toronto with nine films, made a modest Thursday grab for the Julianne Moore drama “Still Alice” and also bought the German WWII drama “Labyrinth of Lies.” One of “Still Alice’s” producers, Christine Vachon, tweeted the word “Sold!,” which sounded like both a sigh of relief and call for celebration.
There were other slightly larger deals, of course. A24 shelled out $4 million on Noah Baumbach’s “While We’re Young,” Saban Films spent more than $2 million for U.S. rights to John Travolta’s art-heist drama “The Forger” and Lionsgate/Radius ponied up roughly $2 million for the Michael Douglas thriller “The Reach.” But what made the “Top Five” purchase so notable was that its price tag was so anomalous and the bidding so heated.
The rest of the market never really got fired up. Part of the problem was that there was a distinct lack of commercial product with known names, buyers griped. That’s bad news for the smaller-scale dramas that need big names in order to guarantee foreign sales. As studio executives and indie players noted privately, the movie business has done a terrible job of minting new stars over the past decade, and that’s creating real headaches for riskier movies looking for some insurance by casting big names in order to get bankrolled.
It also creates headaches for backers who come to festivals looking presell rights. Some, such as the Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling pairing on “The Nice Guys,” generated lots of interest, but even lining up the best talent is no longer a guarantee that buyers will come running, executives say. “There are fewer presales,” said Lisa Wilson, co-founder and partner of the international sales company the Solution Entertainment Group. “The market has changed and people now are comfortable waiting to see what they’re buying.”
The new reality for filmmaking is that since studios aren’t interested in making dramas targeted to adults, independent distributors have to shoulder all the risk. “They would rather lose $100 million and make $300 million than be in the game of making $30 million,” said director Edward Zwick, who came to Toronto with “Pawn Sacrifice,” a $16 million drama about chess player Bobby Fischer (starring Tobey Maguire). “And suddenly all of us in the business, if we want to still make those movies, we have to find others willing to takes those risks, and the studios after the fact cherry-pick as distributors.”
That puts even more pressure on Toronto to deliver the goods. It wasn’t just the deals that were off-kilter. The schedule also felt backloaded, as a result of the decision to prevent films that had screened at Telluride from showing at the festival until day five. As a result, the festival didn’t reach its fever pitch until Monday, when the most hyped galas were all scheduled on top of each other.
Channing Tatum, Steve Carell and Mark Ruffalo were on the red carpet for “Foxcatcher” (which debuted at Cannes). A few hours later, Reese Witherspoon glammed up to show that she’s not the character she plays on a 1,100-mile hike in “Wild” (Telluride). There was a dinner and screening of the Mike Leigh critical darling “Mr. Turner” (Cannes). Jon Stewart introduced his directorial debut “Rosewater” (Telluride). And Jennifer Aniston caused a stampede in a theater lobby when she tried to board an elevator prior to the world premiere of “Cake.”
In the end, this year’s festival could have used a few more Chris Rock moments. The Telluride rule probably didn’t hinder the dealmaking, but it still gave the impression that Toronto’s deck was stacked out of order.
