Sundance Film Fest in a chill ending as few big deals made

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The Sundance Film Festival has long been an epic-center for hot-button issues. With the #MeToo movement, diversity and representation in film and even the current US presidency, this year was expected to be hotter than ever.

However, things didn't seem to turn out well. As the annual indie film festival inches to a close on Sunday, few big deals were made and even fewer potential breakouts emerged.

"You came out of last year thinking there are four strong best picture contenders here which were 'Call Me By Your Name,' 'Get Out,' 'Mudbound' and 'The Big Sick,'" said Kyle Buchanan, senior editor of Vulture. "This year, I don't necessarily sense that there's a best picture nominee among these movies."

Last year's big buyers Amazon and Netflix have also become cautious. The biggest acquisition so far is Neon/AGBO's 10-million-US-dollar deal for the teen girls versus misogynists genre film "Assassination Nation." Among the next highest was the 7-million-US-dollar HBO Films spent for "The Tale," starring Laura Dern as a woman who suffered sexual abuse when she was 13.

In comparison, Amazon shelled out 12 million US dollars for "The Big Sick" last year while Netflix bought "Mudbound" for 12.5 million US dollars.

110 features premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. /Photo via sundance.org

"The Tale," in Buchanan's eyes, was among the best shots for awards love. But now it won't even get a theatrical release.

"It's just a sign of where the quality adult entertainment is going," commented Brent Lang, senior film and media editor for Variety, who broke out the HBO acquisition of "The Tale."

"There is a lot of uncertainty in this space. Usually Fox Searchlight would have come out with a lot of big acquisitions but I think with their ownership change with Disney, it didn't seem like they were quite as aggressive."

Lang noted that Searchlight, Netflix and Amazon have been doing more in-house productions and fewer acquisitions.

"That kind of depressed the market and changed things," he said.

It left more room for smaller distributors to scoop up films like "Monsters and Men," "Sorry to Bother You," "Blindspotting," "Colette," "Leave No Trace" and "Search," "American Animals" and "Hearts Beat Loud".

And some of the more positively reviewed films, like comedian Bo Burnham's "Eighth Grade" and Gus Van Sant's "Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot" came into the festival with distribution in place. But there seems to be no one film that everyone is buzzing about, especially when it comes to next year's Oscars.

"There are all sorts of ways that the mood of the country or the plan of the distributor could help push one of these movies to the forefront. But I think that we'll mostly see the Sundance films contending in other categories besides (best) picture," Buchanan said.

(with inputs from AP)