#Venice: What the Strike Means for Indie Film Sales

The business side of the fall film festivals — the backroom bidding wars and late night sales sessions in which hype and buzz around a big Venice-Toronto-Telluride premiere is transmuted into a seven- or eight-figure distributor’s check — could be MIA this year. New conditions placed on film sales for movies that received SAG-AFTRA waivers to attend and promote at the fall fests mean the markets’ biggest buyers — the studios and streamers, members of the production guild, the AMPTP — may be sitting things out this season. 

On Aug. 15, SAG chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland outlined to the press the terms of the interim promotional agreements given to movies to allow them to bring SAG-affiliated talent to festivals. If a film gets a SAG-AFTRA waiver, the film’s seller has to adhere to the terms the guild has proposed for its new contract with AMPTP, including higher residual payments for actors and below-the-line talent and a share of subscription revenue produced by those projects. Sales agents will pass those terms on to festival buyers. 

For many independent movies, which rely on festival publicity and audience buzz to get any sale at all, and whose most likely buyers are the non-AMPTP affiliated companies like Neon and A24, agreeing to SAG’s terms is worth it. 

“We agreed to SAG’s new criteria for the sale of our film and as a result we are allowed to talk about the film,” actor David Krumholtz told THR Roma at the recent Locarno Film Festival, where he was promoting Bob Byington’s indie comedy Lousy Carter. “It was a fight to get the waiver.”

The waiver restrictions won’t impact films with U.S. indie distribution already in place, so Ferrari (distributed by Neon in the U.S.) and A24’s Priscilla can benefit from their interim agreements without worrying about any sales downside. Not so Richard Linklater’s action comedy Hit Man, which could explain why, reportedly, the film will be screening in Venice without a waiver.

But many sales agents are worried the writers guild’s stipulations will mean AMPTP members like Netflix, Disney or Amazon — the deep-pocketed buyers that are usually responsible for the biggest festival deals — will pass on any projects that require them to sign up for conditions they have already rejected in contract talks with SAG-AFTRA. In his briefing to journalists, Crabtree-Ireland seemed to confirm that, noting that it is unlikely indie films that secure guild festival waivers will end up on platforms owned by AMPTP members. 

“I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumors of comments being made by certain major streamers that they won’t acquire content that’s subject to the interim agreement,” said Crabtree-Ireland. “That makes sense to me, because the interim agreement [includes] a streaming revenue share requirement, and that requirement is applicable to any kind of license or platforming of an interim agreement project on one of the AMPTP streaming services.” Which means it might be a quiet season, business-wise, at the fall festivals this year. That is, unless SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP come back to the negotiating table and hammer out a new deal.