“Thelma,” the action comedy starring a 93-year-old June Squibb, sold to Magnolia Pictures out of last year’s Sundance for around $2-3 million and made $12.5 million at the box office. That box office is about $4.5 million less than what Netflix paid for the straight-to-streaming horror title “It’s What’s Inside” at the fest. That movie spent just one week on the streamer’s global Top 10, and without a significant theatrical release.
Looking ahead in 2025, it’s time to start recalibrating what success looks like, and Sundance may be the perfect place to start.
For Magnolia, last year’s “Thelma” turned out to be the best-performing film in the indie distributor’s 23-year history. Magnolia bought the movie in a competitive situation at Sundance 2024 and was an unlikely player to give it a wide release.
The indie success stories don’t stop there. MUBI was a surprise, aggressive buyer for “The Substance” out of Cannes, a movie thought to be just a niche, genre play, but it’s still reaping rewards ($78 million worldwide). Sony Pictures Classics bought “Kneecap” out of Sundance and even picked up some additional international territories, and it’s now on the Oscars shortlist for Best International Feature. IFC Films bought 2023 SXSW premiere “Late Night With the Devil” as a streaming-only play for Shudder and saw it gross $10 million domestic. Amazon bought “My Old Ass” for $15 million at Sundance, which has only grossed $5.7 million, but it still has legs on streaming.
All that success in 2024 means buyers can’t afford to be conservative in 2025.
“This was a year where across the board, every buyer seemed to have success with something that almost from the outside in looked unexpected, and that’s exciting for the marketplace,” Ryan Heller, VP of film and acquisitions with Topic Studios, told IndieWire. “It makes us more open. The combination of right buyer and right movie can come from more places.” Topic Studios this year has Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s documentary “Folktales” and Amy Berg’s “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” at Sundance. Last year, the company backed “A Real Pain,” which Searchlight bought out of the festival for $10 million. The Jesse Eisenberg-directed drama has so far earned $8 million domestic, with more potential after Oscar nominations.
It’s translating to the type of movies agents are shopping at Sundance and a credit to the slate the Sundance programmers have put together. The typical hallmarks of the commercial, crowd-pleasing indie are not the sure things anymore.
“It ain’t the Kentucky Derby, it’s Monmouth Park. You can’t handicap it, and it’s always a total surprise,” one distributor told IndieWire. “You don’t know it until you see it. What’s the culture at the moment, and how does this movie fit into that?”
Several sales agents IndieWire spoke with ahead of the festival are crafting their slates to feature titles that “have a commercial edge, but might be a little more sophisticated than the stuff they would make themselves.”
“They go to Sundance for that X-factor, looking for things they wouldn’t commission otherwise,” one agent said.
The agent clarified that these movies aren’t on the edge of the market but are this year responding to it. Sideshow and Janus Films, MUBI, Metrograph, and more are looking for daring titles and are willing to play as multi-territory buyers. Magnolia now knows it can achieve outsize success if it reaches for a wider release, and sure enough, the distributor on Tuesday announced it had acquired “One to One: John and Yoko” ahead of its Sundance screening (it premiered at Venice) with the intention of giving it Magnolia’s first-ever release in IMAX. Even the likes of A24 and Neon are moving into bigger phases financially and are primed to get creative (A24 has several movies it’s already debuting, but that hasn’t stopped it from picking up at least one more in the past). At least one buyer speculated an A24 or Neon, each of which has their own burgeoning TV divisions, could get real creative and look at Cooper Raiff’s “Hal & Harper,” a rare buzzy title on the Episodic slate.
Dan Bekerman of Scythia Films, the producer who sold “My Old Ass” to Amazon last year and in 2025 has the animated documentary “Endless Cookie” and Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet” (Bleecker Street), said the buyers this year are more aware that “uniqueness can be an asset.”
“I’ve watched that ebb and flow over my career of people wanting something cookie-cutter versus wanting something unique,” Bekerman said. “There is a recognition now that the unique qualities are one of the best tools in an oversaturated, uncertain market.”
It could even mean that a major studio jumps into the fray in a way unheard of in years past. Warner Bros. Discovery bought last year’s “Super/Man” from Sundance, and Paramount bought “September 5” out of Venice and Toronto. This year, the Jennifer Lopez-starring musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman” or “Last Days” from “Fast & Furious” director Justin Lin could be enough to get them interested.
In terms of Netflix and Amazon, one rival distributor felt the streamers are under less pressure to buy a finished film and are more inclined to look at bigger-budgeted pre-buys. Every year, they seem to signal sitting this year out, and yet every year they spend big on something. Netflix in particular bought three documentaries last year in addition to “It’s What’s Inside.” One major agent hopes that the success of Netflix’s Cannes acquisition “Emilia Pérez,” a movie so daring that a streamer likely would’ve never made it themselves, “signals a need or a desire for Netflix to continue being acquisitive.”
Documentaries are another story, and those, too, need to get creative to find homes. ITVS, which co-produces indie docs via public funding, this year has five films premiering at the festival, including “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” playing in competition. All eventually air on PBS. Having at least one form of release somewhat lessens the pressure on those films to find an additional theatrical distributor, but “it’s a sign of the times” of what’s happening in the rest of the industry that such films need to lean on public funding, ITVS executives Carrie Lozano and Lois Vossen said.
“The landscape is what it is, and we can’t pretend otherwise,” Vossen said. “It’s a difficult market for social issue docs.”
For Joe Lewis and Lauren Haber of Amplify Pictures, which brings Ryan White’s (“Assassins” and “The Case Against 8”) documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light” to Sundance, there’s still a disconnect between what gets bought and what is winning acclaim. They note that 10 of the year’s 15 Oscar-shortlisted documentaries premiered at Sundance last year, but many like political doc “Union” or “Hollywoodgate” struggled to find distribution at the festival and have had to turn to self-distribution methods.
“I think there’s what buyers say they want, and then there’s the experience of seeing something and just really being moved by it and won over by it, seeing how special and intimate this kind of filmmaking is and how rare it is anymore,” Haber said.
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