Great Movies
Roger Ebert
Indie security alert level: Severe
Every year good films show at the Toronto Film festival that never open anywhere near you. This year some good films played that may never open anywhere, even if you live in Toronto--or New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin or upstairs over a Landmark Theater multiplex. Toronto is traditionally a lively marketplace for the purchase of film rights for new non-studio product: Indies, docs, foreign films. This year Harvey Weinstein paid $1 million for "A Single Man," and that was that. One sale, one movie, one million -- probably as little as Harvey has paid for a movie in some time.
Stands at yellow, rising toward orange
The makers of independent films don't have to send to learn for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for them. The bottom fell out of the market. That doesn't mean there were no other offers, but it means there were none that the sellers felt able to accept. It shows a collapse of confidence in the prospects of independent film distribution.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to Anne Thompson, who always knows what she's talking about. In her blog Thompson on Hollywood, she leads: "The old independent market is over." She quotes the producer Jonathan Dana: "It's a massacre. It's the end of funny money."
Thompson names a few of the films going home without deals, and it's depressing:
