Business booms again at film festival amid flurry of deals
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A publicity still from Wu Xia. |
The business of cinema is roaring back to life at Cannes after a prolonged bout of gloom, finding renewed strength in money from China, the return of Hollywood studios and the pulling power of A-list stars.
Movie executives at the French Riviera festival, which doubles as a huge market for films from around the world, say distributors are spending more freely on new projects now that a period of tight financing, due to the global financial crisis, has eased.
Stars out in force
Among the signs of renewed health are the presence of artists like Kanye West and Lady Gaga at the festival's glitzy after-work parties and sights like Kung Fu Panda 2 star Angelina Jolie on the red carpet, as well as the big studios' willingness to splash out on lavish entertainment for their customers.
Leaving austerity behind, US studio Miramax hired a fleet of speedboats to ferry executives from the Cannes Film Festival to a private beach at nearby Cap d'Antibes, to meet company chiefs and actor Rob Lowe, also a film investor.
"I am sensing this optimism because people are starting to realize that opportunities are growing," Mike Lang, chief executive of Miramax, the studio behind films including Trainspotting and No Country For Old Men, told Reuters.
"Over the next 10 years, I think you will see something much bigger than what we saw over the last 20," Lang added. "There are more pay TV channels, emerging markets et cetera and we have not even talked about China."
He said Miramax had more than 70 new projects to tout, in addition to its existing library.
"Things are so strong in that area [the library] that we've been able to talk about new product quicker than we were thinking."
Hollywood studios are leading the charge in terms of buying, with The Weinstein Company snapping up rights to Meryl Streep's biopic of Margaret Thatcher, The Iron Lady, a French silent movie called The Artist and Chinese martial arts epic Wu Xia.
Amid a flurry of other deals, Lionsgate Entertainment has also bought North American distribution rights for The Hunters, a French suspense movie, while Sony Pictures Classics has bought North and Latin American rights for Israeli competition entrant Footnote.
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Kung Fu Panda 2. |
Japan, Middle East sit out
But Hollywood studios only account for a small portion of the deals being struck at Cannes, where hundreds of studios from Bollywood to Puerto Rico converge to network, flog their wares and soak up the heady atmosphere.
Much of the nitty-gritty action takes place out of sight of the festival's main venue, in a sprawling warren of stalls where executives advertise their latest – films with titles like Dear Friend Hitler and Supreme Champion: Vengeance is Bloody – and watch movies in individual booths.
Alice Coelho, a saleswoman at Bollywood studio Eros films, said interest for their top feature, Ra One, was strong and had no doubts the film would find a buyer. "We are only showing a 30-second trailer but people are willing to close deals," she said.
For US studio Fabrication Films, which produces small and medium-budget genre pictures, the biggest windfall this year has come from Chinese buyers willing to snap up entire film catalogues that they then market online, thus avoiding state censorship.
"China has really exploded this year," said Miriam Elchanan, senior vice-president of sales at the Fabrication Films. "They're buying big numbers like we have never seen before... The Internet has a lot to do with it."
However, few deals were being struck with buyers from earthquake-hit Japan, usually a big client for genre movies, or the Middle East, where the "Arab Spring" of political instability has induced caution on the part of potential buyers, she added.
"The Middle East is a disaster... When you have all this unrest, that market becomes very difficult," she said, adding that "The buyers are here but they are not buying."
And some customers steer clear of movies altogether, Elchanan noted. "In Turkey, it's about telenovellas" – syrupy television serials produced in Latin America – "They are all addicted."
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