Industry stalwarts John Sloss of Cinetic Media and Killer Films’ Christine Vachon offered a dynamic and inventive survey of contemporary film production and financing during the closing keynote of San Sebastian’s Creators Investors’ Conference Tuesday.
At the start of the session, the pair discussed their personal experiences of navigating the US independent scene in 2022, during which Vachon said she continues to see a dramatic drop in the value of her films on the international market.
“We’ve taken things to market that feel extremely undervalued,” she said. “What happens more these days is that we take something out and we’re a little shocked that the market is like ‘Okay, we like it. But we like it for about two-thirds of what you actually need to get it made.’”
Vachon said this downward trend directly affects her work with cast and crew members who she said have yet to grasp the scale of change in the way films are now financed.
“There’s a big learning curve right now, which is that the cast and their representation have not caught up to the fact that the business has changed so radically,” she said.
“I think that a lot of talent doesn’t realize that those backends don’t really exist anymore, and these above-the-line scenarios where the actor was paid some extraordinary amount of money, and the below-the-line was at a minimum, just don’t make any economic sense anymore because you can’t really make anything good.”
Sloss added that this trend is exacerbated by streaming services that are often willing to pay much higher fees for films.
“You have streamers paying $150 million for a $50 million film,” he said.
However, Sloss later added that the deep pockets of streamers aren’t entirely negative and could potentially provide new streams of residual income for productions.
“Streamers aren’t really into library,” he said. “If you said to them I know you want to overpay wildly for this film. How about if you paid a little less but only owned it for 18 months as opposed to in perpetuity because that’s how long it’s valuable to you? If they’re being honest they’ll probably look at you and say why 18 months it should be 17 days.”
Sloss said at that point a producer could take back their film and monetize it through licensing deals with competitive streamers who have different subscriber bases.
“I believe that’s the future or at least I’d like to see it as the future.”
A significant chunk of the keynote was dedicated to streamers as well as the topic of theatrical distribution. Later during the session, the pair were asked whether they think independent dramas can still draw audiences to cinemas, to which Vachon responded: “Some of them clearly have, but what’s the alchemy exactly?”
“The conversations we had at Killer constantly when we decided to take something on was: Well, is it theatrical? What makes it theatrical? What’s that element? What’s the thing?” she said before citing Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s 2014 film Still Alice as a perfect contemporary example of a theatrical film.
“It’s based on a book that sold all over the world and translated into virtually every language. It’s about something that almost everybody has had some brush with. And it was always predicated on Julianne Moore giving a performance that was so off the charts that it would compel you to see it, as depressing as it was. So those are the kinds of needles we thread,” she said.
“The movie has to be so original and feel like such a different voice and then that filmmaker has to hit it completely out the park. And that’s a theatrical film.”
