Presales Are Back to Star-Plus-a-Hook
Summary
Highland Film Group launched worldwide presales on Bluefly (Russell Crowe, Priyanka Chopra Jonas) as CAA's Roeg Sutherland told a TIFF panel that closing four or five major territories now counts as a win
Highland Film Group launched international presales on Bluefly, a sci-fi action thriller starring Russell Crowe and Priyanka Chopra Jonas and directed by Nimrod Antal, at this year's TIFF market, with production set for later this year in Australia, Deadline reported. Angel Studios separately launched its first pre-sales push at the same market on Rode to Ruin, the Michael Keaton and Morgan Freeman Western. Speaking on a Global Sales Playbook panel at TIFF, CAA's Roeg Sutherland said the era of presold financing covering most of a film's budget internationally is gone. "The years of being able to go to Toronto, Berlin or Cannes and mostly pre-sale an indie movie up to 80 percent of a budget are long gone," he said. "You're lucky if you can go and pre-sell four or five major territories and then you still have to figure out how to make the puzzle work." Sutherland said packaging now has to start with the script or source material and a producer attached, well before casting. TIFF's own post-market analysis, tracked by FilmTake, found the first edition drew 1,473 registered buyers, up 19 percent year over year, but produced mostly smaller deals and territorial sales rather than the two or three blockbuster acquisitions past festivals generated; U.S. buyers described the domestic acquisition titles on offer as less commercial than usual.
The Kinolime Lens
Sutherland naming a specific number, four or five territories instead of an 80-percent-of-budget presale, is the kind of concrete benchmark independent producers should actually budget against rather than the vaguer optimism festivals tend to generate. It also explains why star-plus-hook packages like Bluefly are the ones launching presales rather than smaller original scripts: a recognizable pairing is what still reliably moves four or five territories in a market where buyers have gotten more selective, and a producer without that kind of cast attached should plan on a longer, harder financing road than the festival circuit's own marketing suggests.