In a sign of collaboration between the agencies, that particular package is being sold by ICM and Endeavor Content. Conversations are going on almost daily between the leading packagers at different agencies, something that almost never happened before. They know that buyers are hungry. MGM and Netflix are on a tear. Amazon will want to get in on the mix. Indie buyers like Leonine are establishing themselves.
“We won’t show anything that needs a festival launch,” another European stalwart told us. “We’ll stick to our more commercial and English-language titles. We’ll hold back our arthouse films for later this year.” “We’ll do screenings in the morning and deal-making in the evening,” one major European buyer told us. “We have American shareholders so we don’t sleep anyway. I’ve reserved from noon until midnight so I hope that’s enough time. For safety, we will have people in both markets. We want to be across both. There are a lot of projects around. I think it will be a good market; an interesting market.”
They continued, “A big challenge for us is how distributors are going to manage cash flows once the bigger films are ready to be delivered? A lot of international buyers are facing blows on films that are being released straight to VOD in the U.S. when the VOD business in the rest of the world doesn’t match the business generated in the States.”