“Thelma,” the action comedy starring a 93-year-old June Squibb, sold to Magnolia Pictures from last year Sundance for around $2-3 million and earned $12.5 million at the box office. That box office is about $4.5 million less than what Netflix paid for direct-to-streaming horror title “It’s What’s Inside” at the party. That film spent just one week in the streamer’s global top 10, and without a significant theatrical release.
Looking ahead to 2025, it’s time to start recalibrating what success looks like, and Sundance might be the perfect place to start.
For Magnolia, last year’s “Thelma” turned out to be the one best-performing film in the indie distributor’s 23-year history. Magnolia bought the film in a competitive situation at Sundance 2024 and was an unlikely player to give it a wide release.
The indie success stories don’t end there. THE BAD was a surprise, aggressive buyer for Cannes’ “The Substance,” a film thought to be just a niche, genre play but still reaping the rewards ($78 million worldwide). Sony Pictures Classics bought “Kneecap” out of Sundance and even grabbed a few more international territories, and it’s now on the Oscars list for Best International Picture. IFC Films bought the 2023 SXSW premiere of “Late Night With the Devil” as a streaming-only play for Shudder and saw it gross $10 million domestically. Amazon bought “My Old Ass” for $15 million at Sundance, which has only made $5.7 million, but still has legs on streaming.
All that success in 2024 means buyers can’t afford to be conservative in 2025.
“This was a year where all buyers seemed to have success overall with something that almost from the outside looked unexpected, and that’s exciting for the market,” Ryan Heller, VP of film and acquisitions with Topic Studios, told IndieWire. – It makes us more open. The combination of the right buyer and the right film can come from several directions.” Topic Studios this year has Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s documentary “Folktales” and Amy Berg’s “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” at Sundance. Last year, the company backed “A Real Pain,” which Searchlight bought out of the festival for $10 million. The Jesse Eisenberg-directed drama has earned $8 million domestically so far, with more potential after Oscar nominations.
That translates into what kind of films agents shop at Sundance and a credit to the slate the Sundance programmers have put together. The typical hallmarks of the commercial, crowd-pleasing indie are not the sure things anymore.
“It’s not the Kentucky Derby, it’s Monmouth Park. You can’t handicap it, and it’s always a total surprise,” one distributor told IndieWire. “You don’t know it until you see it. What is the culture of the moment, and how does this film fit into that?”
Several sales agents IndieWire spoke with ahead of the festival are crafting their tables to include titles that “have a commercial edge, but are maybe a little more sophisticated than the stuff they would do themselves.”
“They go to Sundance for that X factor and look for things they wouldn’t order otherwise,” said one agent.
The agent clarified that these films are not on the fringes of the market but this year they are responding to that. Sideshow and Janus Films, MUBI, Metrographand more are looking for bold titles and are willing to play as buyers in multiple territories. Magnolia now knows it can hit big if it reaches a wider release, and indeed the distributor announced Tuesday that it had acquired “One to One: John and Yoko” ahead of its Sundance screening (it premiered in Venice) with the intention of giving it Magnolia’s first ever release in IMAX. Even the likes of A24 and Neon are entering bigger phases financially and ready to get creative (A24 has several movies it’s already premiering, but that hasn’t stopped it from picking up at least one more earlier). At least one buyer speculated that an A24 or Neon, each with their own burgeoning TV departments, could get really creative and watch Cooper Raiff’s “Hal & Harper,” a rare lively episode title.
Dan Bekerman of Scythia Films, the producer that sold “My Old Ass” to Amazon last year and 2025 had the animated documentary “Endless Cookie” and Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet” (Bleecker Street), said buyers this year are more aware of that “uniqueness can be an asset”.
“I’ve seen the ebb and flow over my career of people wanting something cookie-cutter versus wanting something unique,” Bekerman said. “There is a recognition now that the unique features are one of the best tools in an oversaturated, uncertain market.”
It could even mean a major studio jumping into the fray in a way never seen before. Warner Bros. Discovery bought last year’s “Super/Man” from Sundance, and Paramount bought “September 5” from Venice and Toronto. This year, the musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman” or “Last Days” from “Fast & Furious” director Justin Lin with Jennifer Lopez might be enough to get them interested.
In the case of Netflix and Amazon, a rival distributor felt that streamers are under less pressure to buy a finished film and are more likely to look at bigger budget pre-orders. Every year they seem to signal that they are sitting out this year, and yet every year they spend big money on something. Notably, Netflix bought three documentaries last year in addition to “It’s What’s Inside.” A major agent hopes that the success of Netflix’s Cannes acquisition “Emilia Pérez,” a film so daring that a streamer probably never would have made it itself, “signals a need or a desire for Netflix to continue to be profitable.”
Documentaries are a different story, and they too need to get creative to find a home. ITVS, which co-produces indie docs via public funding, has five films premiering at the festival this year, including “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” playing in competition. All air in the end PBS. Having at least some form of release reduces the pressure on these films to find another theatrical distributor, but “it’s a sign of the times” of what’s happening in the rest of the industry that such films need to rely on public funding, ITVS executives Carrie Lozano and Lois Vossen said.
“The landscape is what it is, and we can’t pretend otherwise,” Vossen said. “It’s a tough market for social issues.”
For Joe Lewis and Lauren Haber of Amplify Pictures, who are taking Ryan White’s (“Assassins” and “The Case Against 8”) documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light” to Sundance, there’s still a disconnect between what’s bought and what which is winning praise. They note it 10 of this year’s 15 Oscar shortlisted documentaries premiered at Sundance last year, but many like political docs “Union” or “Hollywoodgate” struggled to find distribution at the festival and have had to turn to self-distribution methods.
“I think there’s what buyers say they want, and then there’s the experience of seeing something and just being really moved by it and won over by it, seeing how special and intimate this kind of filmmaking is and how rare it’s longer,” Haber said.
