The Sundance Film Festival wrapped on Sunday with some large gross sales in a difficult indie movie panorama with distributors in want of content material. New on the 40th version, the second post-Covid and led for the primary time by director Eugene Hernandez: a kickoff occasion with Jason Blum, 19 movies on opening day, a narrower digital footprint, and fewer options as Hernandez focuses on “first impressions” and “giving each of our invited films and filmmakers the celebratory, unforgettable introduction they deserve.” Cost and staffing concerns had been additionally at play. Meanwhile, Sundance is about to start out renewal talks with longtime host Park City, a dialog that comes round each seven years. Hernandez, the longtime New York Film Festival director and IndieWire co-founder, who additionally heads year-round public programming for the Sundance Institute, talked with Deadline about his inaugural run in snowy Utah. The pageant ran Jan. 18-28.
(The Q&A was edited and condensed for readability.)
DEADLINE: Can you speak about adjustments this 12 months, beginning with a really completely different opening day, together with an look by Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum?
EUGENE HERNANDEZ: I’m going to go a bit of broader on this after which communicate to the particular query. We actually tried to rethink how we kicked off the pageant this 12 months. Back within the early days once I first began attending, there was a singular opening night time movie, and that was truly in Salt Lake City. In subsequent years, there have been a handful of day-one movies, and they might play a brand new movie in every venue. This 12 months, within the redesign of the mannequin, on day one we made some important for Sundance adjustments and we began screenings at midday, and we premiered 19 movies — 19 world premieres. And I feel that’s essential as a result of we actually needed the main target to be on the slate of movies from the beginning. We needed to verify we pushed that message out to the business — to reach early, get there on Wednesday night time, have dinner with pals, and be able to go Thursday morning. So not having a singular opening night time movie, however having this entire slate of movies.
And speaking with the staff, and speaking at a board retreat again in October on the Sundance Resort — Jason is among the members of our board and has an extended historical past with the pageant — about plans to kick off the pageant, we got here up with this concept. We didn’t even name it a press convention, we known as it the Sundance Scoop…a dialog with Jason [and Hernandez, Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente and programming head Kim Yutani] to set the tone and open this 12 months’s pageant. [Blum said at the event he hopes Sundance films wind up in theaters and should with the 2024 release schedule “decimated.”]
When I began going to Sundance [founder] Robert Redford would do a lunch with filmmakers on the Sundance Resort and a press convention there. He successfully introduced he was type of taking a step again from Sundance [in 2019] Coming out the pandemic, we thought, how can we reshape this second? We did this occasion with Jason. And on Saturday, we hosted a brunch for the entire filmmakers up on the Sundance Resort, and Amy Redford gave keynote remarks on behalf of her dad and household, and he or she and skim an announcement that her dad shared.
As for the long run, I can’t communicate to that but. We’ll be speaking about how we need to open subsequent 12 months’s pageant.
DEADLINE: Another change we observed is that the Eccles Theater, for example, wasn’t programmed for the complete week. And the Midnight part movies performed sooner than midnight.
HERNANDEZ: We advanced the footprint of the pageant this 12 months to be as accountable, and in consideration of not solely value, after all that’s one thing you at all times consider, but additionally the influence on and workload of our employees. It’s a heavy carry. We have 1000’s of volunteers, some native, some journey from everywhere in the nation yearly. It’s a heavy load to be out within the snow and the chilly as many hours a day as our groups are to tug off this pageant. So after we actually checked out how the pageant may have one of the best and most significant influence — and since we had made the choice to present every movie its premiere, its press and business screening, and a follow-up screening in Park City earlier than Tuesday — we realized we may and will regulate the bodily footprint of the pageant within the second half. And so what you noticed is a extra intimate expertise. The heart a part of the pageant is dedicated to our artists and our alumni, and the ultimate weekend is concerning the award winners, elevating these movies, so it made extra sense to essentially embrace the intimacy of the expertise through the use of and specializing in the venues that might actually assist that vibe. We additionally tried to be accountable to each the underside line and in addition to our employees and our groups, evaluating the place we wanted the venues to occur and when. So as a result of every thing premiered by Tuesday, it made sense to maintain these venues energetic by Tuesday after which, as we moved into the ultimate two chapters of the pageant, we may regulate accordingly.
Eccles is the pageant’s greatest venue with 1,200 seats.
On the Midnight part, it’s a heavy carry for our groups to be on name and on the entrance strains till two or three within the morning and again to work the following morning for a 9 am screening. Its a giant ask.
Of course, once more, the factor to remember with all of that is we’re going to be evaluating it. We’re taking suggestions from the artists, from the business, from the volunteers. We’ll consider it after which make choices for subsequent 12 months very quickly. We’re already speaking about it.
DEADLINE: What modified within the pageant’s digital element?
HERNANDEZ: Our business pals have been vocal and given us plenty of suggestions and that’s how we formed this 12 months’s digital footprint. With 90+ options, and 50+ shorts, I feel it provides extra folks extra time to meet up with these movies. Last 12 months, all of the movies within the pageant had been required to have digital screenings, and so they began earlier. So you had movies premiering into the primary half of the pageant and also you had been transferring instantly into the digital, with a bigger program of movies. This 12 months, solely competitors movies had been required to be on the platform, though others may choose in and ask to be included. It was a extra restricted, narrower window. In broad strokes, final 12 months was extra movies streaming earlier on the platform and for a much bigger viewers.
This 12 months, in prioritizing that first impression and assuring that each movie had an in-person premiere, a P&I screening, and a follow-up screening in Park City by Tuesday, we had been actually making an attempt to leverage the in-person expertise as a launchpad for every thing that might comply with, together with the awards introduced on Friday. Then folks may catch a few of the winners on the platform for a few days with a restricted variety of streams. Then, the movies exit into the world, head to different festivals and all that.
We tried to create a distance between the premiere and the digital.
We tried to consider digital this 12 months as an extra screening in an extra venue. Just like all screening the place you will have a finite variety of seats.
Something we take actually critically is methods to be a part of serving to every movie and filmmaker have the absolute best launch they will have. Because movies are coming to the pageant model new and contemporary for an viewers. Whether that’s the business who’re seeing it for the primary time proper alongside press, proper alongside different artists who’re within the room, curators from world wide, our native audiences. Everyone is watching the film for the primary time. And that’s a uncommon expertise at solely sure festivals on this planet. And on this case, it’s a pageant and an expertise that’s reserved primarily for first or second-time, early rising artists, with only a handful of established people sprinkled in.
DEADLINE: Sundance had a file 17,400+ submissions this 12 months. Two questions, what are your ideas on the lineup? And was it was impacted by the strike?
HERNANDEZ: I really feel we had such a powerful program that was as very important and daring and impressive because the sorts of movies I noticed at Sundance once I began going within the early 90s. But I feel, as with all 12 months, the business will react and reply to these movies that they really feel they will discover an viewers for. Some of the movies have already been acquired, some will announce offers within the coming days. And others will take a slower method. There are movies from Sundance which are going to Berlin. There are movies that may going to different festivals and can discover their viewers another way, or it’d take a bit of bit longer.
I really feel just like the business has at all times grappled with commerciality round Sundance. And I feel that’s inherent in Mr. Redford’s creation of the Sundance Institute to start with. [It] was at all times exterior of the mainstream Hollywood business. I’m simply relieved that so many movies are already discovering properties so shortly. And I feel we’re going to proceed to see that different movies may take a barely slower method, however I feel they may also discover a dwelling.
[Deals include: Netflix landing worldwide rights to It’s What’s Inside, the thriller written and directed by Greg Jardin, for $17 million. The streamer also acquired docs Ibelin and Skywalkers: A Love Story. Jesse Eisenberg-directed A Real Pain sold to Searchlight for $10 million. Amazon MGM nabbed My Old Ass for $15+ million. In a deal that when closed will also be worth $15 million. Warner Bros. is the frontrunner to land doc Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Neon acquired Steven Soderbergh’s ghostly Presence. Sony Pictures Classics boarded Kneecap, a doc about an Irish rap trio.]
DEADLINE: And the influence of Hollywood strikes final 12 months?
HERNANDEZ: That’s the large query for us. We don’t know what we didn’t see, and whether or not there’s a backlog of movies that wanted to kind of navigate final summer season, and can get completed [or not]. We’re going to be watching intently how the numbers form up for subsequent 12 months, after all. But to have a file variety of submissions this 12 months, a historic quantity for this pageant, even with the strikes, was actually eye opening for us.
We did see a rise in submissions internationally.
DEADLINE: The strike led to some tight timelines as filmmakers granted interim agreements pushed up towards the pageant deadline, like Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s Ghostlight (which offered to IFC Films and Sapan Studios) and Sean Wang’s Audience Award-winner Didi.
HERNANDEZ: Those are simply two examples of filmmakers that kind of self-identified their scenario. I’m positive extra can be speaking about that as we go ahead. We solely noticed what was submitted, we didn’t see what wasn’t prepared. But that’s what we’re anticipating this 12 months, and doubtless what our colleagues from different festivals can be watching. What did SXSW see? What will the summer season festivals discover? What will the autumn festivals — Toronto, Telluride, New York — what’s going to they discover? It’s one thing we’re watching actually intently.
Deadline: There’s chatter across the negotiation with Park City. Can you deal with that?
HERNANDEZ: Obviously I’m new to this position. I’ve been right here a bit of over a 12 months. I do know that each few years there’s a renegotiation and dialog across the settlement between the pageant and Park City, so we occur to be in a 12 months the place we’re about to dig into that dialog. As a former journalist who used to attend the pageant, I used to be at all times asking those self same questions again once I began. Now that I see it from this new vantage level, I really feel like there’s a type of continuity right here. There’s a daily dialog that occurs in Park City [circa every seven years] concerning the relationship between town and the pageant. And that dialog occurs this 12 months.
During the pageant town held an outside celebration to rejoice its 40th version. Cookies, sizzling chocolate, music, some actually superb indigenous performers and speeches and there was simply a lot love that we felt from town in the direction of the pageant and again. It simply jogs my memory on a private word how particular the connection has been through the years. It’s a longstanding relationship.
DEADLINE: What was occurring in Salt Lake City this 12 months?
HERNANDEZ: We refined the footprint. We have a relationship with the Salt Lake City Film Society and its Broadway arthouse theater. And there’s one other venue across the nook, the megaplex on the Gateway. And we added the Rose Wagner Center as a screening venue. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story premiered there. We need to guarantee that we’re exhibiting up the place audiences are already exhibiting up 12 months spherical. It’s actually rewarding now with the pageant over to see that the response was so robust in each cities.
Our artists do commute. There are plenty of school college students, and it’s a neighborhood viewers and its a really responsive viewers. We noticed that night time after night time with sold-out exhibits all through the week, including screenings to fulfill demand.
It’s a marathon. It’s not simply the primary few days that we deal with, on the business aspect, however it’s the complete expertise that we as an institute deal with in giving Utah and our native audiences the chance to have interaction with the movies, and the conversations, and assembly the artists.
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