After years of turbulence, venue shifts and pandemic-era gloom, the indie world’s greatest movie market is again in preventing form — with a packed slate of star-driven titles proving there’s nonetheless life (and patrons) within the enterprise.
Scorching gross sales titles at AFM this 12 months embrace the likes of Anthony Mackie, Adria Arjona, Daisy Edgar Jones, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Seth Rogen and Mia Goth
Getty Pictures (6)
The studies of the dying of the American Movie Market have been vastly exaggerated. After years of turbulence — from the double blow of the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes to a pair of ill-advised venue shifts, together with final 12 months’s misfire in Las Vegas — the world’s main indie film bazaar seems set for a shocking comeback. Relocated to the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles this 12 months’s AFM arrives amid rising confidence that the impartial enterprise nonetheless has loads of combat left in it.
“I believed nobody can be coming to AFM however everybody’s coming,” says Jonathan Kier, co-CEO of manufacturing and worldwide gross sales group Improve Manufacturing. “My schedule is packed — packed.”
“We’ve been stunned by the truth that in the course of the pandemic and the strikes and the contraction of a giant a part of the trade, that a lot of the large impartial distributors world wide have been doing simply effective,” provides his Improve companion Matt Brodlie. “It’s not as dramatic because the U.S. trade, the place everybody’s simply attempting to get by by the pores and skin of their tooth.”
That resilience overseas has given sellers renewed confidence heading to the market’s new dwelling in Century Metropolis, that AFM’s beating coronary heart — the pre-sales enterprise — nonetheless guarantees sufficient oxygen for the worldwide indie ecosystem. THR‘s Scorching Listing of the buzziest titles at AFM lacks the big-budget actioners of years previous however makes up for it in selection, with high-concept style performs, star-driven dramas, and status award-hopefuls providing up a lot for patrons large and small.
However the onerous classes of the previous few years have taught indie execs to curb their optimism.
“It is a scary time,” notes IFTA and AFM chief Jean Prewitt, who’s stepping down after this 12 months’s market. “I don’t know any firm that’s coming into any market saying this one’s going to be straightforward. Everyone is coming in with the view that that is make or break.”
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‘All Day & All Evening’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Tommy Wirkola
STARS Josh Hartnett
BUZZ AFM patrons need style fare that isn’t generic, and there’s nothing regular about this high-concept motion thriller, from the director of Lifeless Snow and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Hartnett performs a reformed financial institution robber who pulls off one remaining heist to fund his daughter’s Harvard tuition, solely to search out himself on the set of a failing actuality TV present.
SALES XYZ Movies
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‘Alone Collectively’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Ben Sharrock
STARS Callum Turner, Adria Arjona, Amir El-Masry
BUZZ Sharrock, who attracted consideration together with his Bafta-nominated Limbo (2020), scales up with this new drama, that includes Callum Turner and Adria Arjona as strangers who join throughout a freak rainstorm within the Arabian desert. Patrons might be reassured by the credentials of the producers, which incorporates Oscar-winner Florian Zeller (The Father).
SALES HanWay Movies
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‘The Arrival’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Bijan Sheibani
STARS Kingsley Ben-Adir, Archie Madekwe, Joanna Scanlan, Alex Descas
BUZZ Actors Madekwe (Saltburn, Lurker) and Ben-Adir (Bob Marley: One Love) play brothers separated in childhood who reunite as adults within the debut characteristic from rising Brit expertise Sheibani. Melodramas generally is a robust style to pre-sell however this one comes with a solid of top-notch character actors, together with Scanlan (Notes on a Scandal) and Descas (35 Photographs of Rum) because the brothers’ estranged mother and father, which ought to put nervous patrons comfy.
SALES Cornerstone
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‘Infants’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Lauren Miller Rogen
STARS Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick
BUZZ Rogen and Kendrick play a pair combating the choice of whether or not or to not carry a baby into the world who turn out to be prompt co-parents when their a newly-divorced pal, and her 3-year-old, transfer in with them. A high-concept dramedy with sufficient star energy to draw theatrical patrons, international and home.
SALES AGC Studios/CAA Media Finance
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‘Dangerous Bridgets’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Wealthy Peppiatt
STARS Daisy Edgar-Jones, Emilia Jones
BUZZ Coda actress Emilia Jones and On Swift Horses star Daisy Edgar-Jones (no relation), play sisters on this interval piece from Kneecap director Peppiatt concerning the Irish famine and the plight of girls within the nineteenth century. A high-brow providing for upscale distributors.
SALES FilmNation, WME Impartial
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‘Desert Warrior’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Rupert Wyatt
STARS Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley
BUZZ Lengthy within the making, this $150 million seventh Century Saudi struggle epic arrives at AFM with appreciable baggage, however the blockbuster scope and bankable international stars — together with Captain America‘s Mackie — needs to be sufficient to persuade international patrons to saddle up.
SALES AGC Worldwide
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‘Everyone Needs to F*ck Me’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Jonathan Schey
STARS Taron Egerton, Jessica Henwick
BUZZ Patrons in search of a stable mid-budget theatrical launch may swipe proper on this tasty providing from StudioCanal: A London-set rom-com thriller about fashionable courting, which guarantees two scorching leads and a few subversive subtext.
SALES StudioCanal
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‘Heather of the Valley’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Sheri Elwood
STARS Michelle Buteau, Zooey Deschanel
BUZZ This time journey comedy transports a burnt-out suburban mother and her upbeat high-school pal to 18th century Scotland, a world the place they each have yearned to go to and discover romance and journey. When they’re magically transported there, they discover that point interval to be much less “romance” and extra mud, violence and physique odor.
SALES Improve, Elevation Photos
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‘Hey Bear’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Jonathan Krisel
STARS Mia Goth, Zach Galifianakis, Dan Stevens
BUZZ Comedies are all the time a tricky promote internationally, however the debut characteristic from Portlandia creator Krisel has main cult potential. The revenge comedy has Goth taking part in a spouse decided to search out the bear (Mr. Cranky) who ate her husband (Stevens). Galifianakis is the socially awkward park ranger who joins her in her quest for ursine vengeance.
SALES HanWay Movies/WME Impartial/UTA Impartial Movie Group
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‘I Is One other’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Felix Randau
STARS Claes Bang, Valerie Pachner
BUZZ The Sq. and Dangerous Sisters star Bang performs the therapeutic massage therapist of Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler. After the struggle, he claims to have been a hero, serving to hundreds of focus camp prisoners escape. However a dogged journalist thinks she sees holes in his story. An unbelievable true story with a interval sheen to attraction to status patrons.
SALES Beta Cinema
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‘Ink’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Danny Boyle
STARS Man Pearce, Jack O’Connell, Claire Foy
BUZZ Boyle, recent off his bounce from the success of 28 Years Later, takes on the Rupert Murdoch origin story, with Pearce because the Aussie media mogul. The attraction of a prime drawer real-life drama with severe awards potential ought to make this biopic stand out.
SALES Studiocanal
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‘The Julia Set’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Niki Byrne
STARS Chase Infiniti, Christopher Briney, Nina Hoss, Chloe Bailey
BUZZ Billed as a female-led Good Will Searching, this status play, focusing on arthouse patrons, options One Battle After One other breakout Infiniti taking part in a gifted mathematician conscripted to face off on this planet’s prime math competitors.
SALES HanWay
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‘King Snake’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Jeff Nichols
STARS Margaret Qualley, Drew Starkey, Michael Shannon
BUZZ After taking over interval (The Bikeriders), melodrama (Loving) and sci-fi (Midnight Particular), director Nichols is attempting his hand at Southern Gothic horror with this twisted story of a younger couple (Qualley and Starkey) who inherit a farm in rural Arkansas and should conquer the demons, each bodily and metaphysical, that hang-out it. A high-end scary film that screams theatrical launch.
SALES FilmNation Leisure
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‘Kockroach’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Matt Ross
STARS Channing Tatum, Taron Egerton, Zazie Beetz
BUZZ Kafka meets Scarface on this New York crime story, tailored from William Lashner’s novel, a few mysterious stranger who transforms himself right into a larger-than-life mob boss. A-list solid plus style hook ought to add as much as sturdy curiosity, significantly from international theatrical patrons.
SALES Black Bear, CAA Media Finance, Vary Choose
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‘Love Language’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Joey Energy
STARS Chloë Grace Moretz, Manny Jacinto, Isabel Might, Anthony Ramos
BUZZ Moretz performs an unfortunate single girl with a expertise for writing different folks’s marriage ceremony vows who will get requested to pen the I-do’s for a girls marrying her previous school flame on this rom-com focusing on theatrical patrons and international streamers.
SALES Protagonist, CAA Media Finance
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‘Ethical Capability’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Brad Anderson
STARS Dacre Montgomery, Sofia Boutella, Tim Robbins, Diane Lane
BUZZ The brand new characteristic from Transsiberian and The Machinist director Brad Anderson appears like a welcome throwback to ’90s erotic thrillers, a style having fun with a comeback in the mean time. Stranger Issues star Montgomery is a married man having an affair with a married lady (Boutella) who will get caught up in a sport of blackmail and manipulation when her husband (Robbins) discovers their deception.
SALES Highland Movie Group/CAA Media Finance
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‘Reenactment’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Grant Singer
STARS Benicio del Toro, Cameron Diaz
BUZZ Plot particulars for this characteristic are being saved underneath wraps, however the re-teaming of Del Toro with Reptile director Singer, scorching off the actor’s award-buzzy efficiency in One Battle After One other, needs to be sufficient to attract patrons in.
SALES 193
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‘The Resurrection of the Christ (Half I & II)’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Mel Gibson
STARS Jaakko Ohtonen, Mariela Garriga, Riccardo Scamarcio, Rupert Everett
BUZZ Gibson’s two-part follow-up to his 2004 biblical blockbuster The Ardour of the Christ seems to be the most important title at AFM this 12 months, with the 2 options coming in at a mixed price range of $200 million-plus. The script continues to be underneath wraps, however anticipate patrons to take a leap of religion that Gibson (working once more with Braveheart screenwriter Randall Wallace) can ship indie salvation.
SALES Lionsgate
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‘Teenage Intercourse and Demise at Camp Miasma’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Jane Schoenbrun
STARS Hannah Einbinder, Gillian Anderson
BUZZ This meta-slasher reboot, a few horror-obsessed filmmaker and the “remaining woman” who impressed her, ought to attract genre-savvy patrons in search of a extra festival-friendly arthouse horror, which comes with some indie cache and a giant dose of humor.
SALES The Match Manufacturing facility
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‘That Time We Met’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Nick Liberman
STARS Pete Davidson, Ella Purnell
BUZZ International patrons are sometimes chilly on U.S. comedies, however this new undertaking from Theater Camp co-director Liberman, along with the A-list casting, comes with a pointy high-concept twist: Davidson and Purnell play a brand new couple who uncover their future unborn little one is destined to save lots of humanity. The one downside is, they’ve simply had their first date they usually hate one another.
SALES WME Impartial
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‘Tombs’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Marie Clements
STARS Amber Midthunder, Cara Jade Myers, Alyssa Wapanatâhk
BUZZ A multigenerational story of heartbreak, trauma and hope that follows three Indigenous sisters and their mom, uprooted by a Nineteen Fifties relocation scheme from Oklahoma to Los Angeles, who forge a house in L.A.’s cemented riverways. An ensemble drama with top-tier indigenous expertise and awards-friendly crossover attraction.
SALES Myriad
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‘Tumor’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Will Bridges
STARS Sam Rockwell, Maisy Stella
BUZZ Rockwell performs a low-end L.A. personal eye battling the signs of a late-stage mind tumor attempting to trace down the daughter of a rich politico on this adaptation of Joshua Hale Fialkov’s acclaimed graphic novel. An upscale movie noir for discerning speciality patrons or streamers.
SALES AGC Worldwide/ UTA Impartial Movie Group/ WME Impartial
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‘The Turning Door’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Nicholas Ashe Bateman
STARS (voice solid): Alicia Vikander, Jamie Dornan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Invoice Nighy
BUZZ Characteristic animation stays a stable enterprise, theatrically and in dwelling leisure, and this title, a few woman who finds a picket field that transports her to a magical world known as The Turning, is being carefully watched by family-friendly distributors.
SALES Mister Smith Leisure, 2AM
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‘Extremely’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Victoria Negri
STARS Shailene Woodley, Garrett Hedlund
BUZZ Woodley performs an ultramarathon runner compelled to confront previous trauma throughout a 135-mile race throughout Demise Valley on this sporting characteristic with Wild vibes that might attraction to indie patrons in search of a cross-over drama.
SALES Mister Smith Leisure, WME Impartial
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‘The Younger Individuals’
Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures DIRECTOR Osgood Perkins
STARS Lola Tung, Nico Parker, Brendan Hines, Cush Jumbo, Heather Graham, Johnny Knoxville, Lexi Minetree, Lily Collias, Tatiana Maslany
BUZZ Perkins’ follow-up to Longlegs and The Monkey guarantees extra high-end horror to feed his rising international fan base. The plot for The Younger Individuals continues to be underneath wraps, however the solid and the Perkins model needs to be ample to promote out.
SALES Neon
A model of this story appeared within the Nov. 5 subject of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.