Deal Scene: Hot Titles, Who’s Buying & the Market’s ‘800-Pound Gorilla’

It’s Monday in Cannes, the clouds are descending and I hear the whirr of suitcases hitting the pavement. With buyers beginning to pack up and head home, a verdict on the 79th edition is coming into view. As Ashley Cullins and I detailed ahead of the fest, industry insiders were hopeful for a buoyant market, and while there are active discussions on a number of titles, the deals are slow-going. This year, it feels like a clear divide between a muted festival and marketplace and what Kino Lorber boss Richard Lorber describes as the “other Cannes,” where conversations around AI and the creator economy have brought a new wave of talent and execs to the Croisette. 

As of this morning, there’s at least one major sale: A24 is the victor of an old-timey bidding war for Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid. As we reported on Saturday, there was heat on the movie from the jump, with one sales agent source telling me his buyers were “sitting in the theater thinking, ‘It’s so good, I’m not going to be able to buy this.’” Sure enough, the movie has, as per Variety, sold for $17 million.

Apart from Club Kid, buyers aren’t seeing an obvious breakout in the vein of 2023’s Anatomy of a Fall or 2022’s Triangle of Sadness. But competition movies like Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden and James Gray’s Paper Tiger — both of which are with Neon for North American rights — are being tipped for awards. (Neon boss Tom Quinn touched down in Cannes only on Sunday, which means he’ll be fresher than most if he’s needed at the awards ceremony.)

I’m fascinated to see the journey ahead for Na Hong-jin’s 160-minute-long creature feature Hope, which premiered on Sunday night to much hooting and hollering at the press screening I attended. Neon has the pic for North America (shocker!), though I hear the movie’s sales agent refused to screen the film for some international buyers ahead of Cannes, opting to keep the plot shrouded in secrecy. And you kinda get why: It’s bananas and boasts such stunning action sequences that you can forgive the dodgy CGI.

Other big titles premiering in the fest’s week two include Cristian Mingiu’s Fjord, starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve; Arthur Harari’s The Unknown, both acquired by Neon ahead of the fest. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s The Black Ball, Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love and Lukas Dhont‘s Coward are still looking for U.S. distribution (you can check out Katey Rich’s conversation with Sachs and his co-writer, Mauricio Zacharias as well as her chat with Dhont — part of The Ankler’s Croisette Conversations in partnership with Brand Innovators at Armani Caffè — on The Ankler’s YouTube).

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‘Where Are the Market Makers?’

Now that A24’s bought Club Kid, there’s hope among sellers that buyers can focus their attention on other prospective sales out of Cannes, even though such deals probably won’t be announced here because buyers wait for prices to come down to Earth post-market. 

Of the U.S. buyers, I hear Black Bear and Warner Bros. Pictures’ new specialty label Clockwork are some of the most active in this year’s market. One senior executive described the pair as “the only ones with any real intent,” particularly as the latter is backed by the might of a major studio. The slight downside is that Clockwork is looking to build out a small slate in this early stage and isn’t casting a wide net in Cannes. (Black Bear, meanwhile, just saw a disappointing box office bow for Guy Ritchie’s In the Grey — its third “far subpar opening” in a row, as Sean McNulty wrote in today’s The Wakeup — raising questions about its move into U.S. distribution last year.)