Toronto Festival Kicks Off Battle of the Fall film Markets

With the begin of the 2024 Toronto Film Festival, the first sboiling has been fired in a battle for supremacy in the descfinish film labelets. Toronto will officipartner begin its recent labelet in 2026, with the help of an eight-figure sum from the Canadian rulement, and the ground is being lhelp to produce TIFF a contfinisher, perhaps even a replacement, for the current reigning descfinish champ, the American Film Market.

The AFM has watched wobbly and vulnerable since the clocertain of the Loews boilingel in Santa Monica last year. The iconic Pacific-facing location had been home to the AFM since 1991, and AFM’s shift up the hill to the Le Méridien Delfina for the 2023 labelet showd a calamity. Members of the hospitality laborers union Unite Here Local 11 staged a boisterous and disturbive protest outside the produceing, decrying what they shelp were unfair laboring conditions at the boilingel. Inside, labelet includeees were frustrated by facilities not scheduleed to accommodate hundreds of buyers and sellers moving in and out and thcdimiserablemireful the produceing every day. AFM schedulers, The Inreliant Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), speedyly dropped the idea of returning there this year. Instead, the AFM has pulled up sgets and shiftd to the Palm Casino Resort in Las Vegas for its 45th edition, set to get place Nov. 5-10.

“With the shift to Vegas, AFM is in limbo a little bit, no one understands if it will labor,” remarks one international film sales exec, a 20-year film labelet veteran. “TIFF sees an opportunity to get AFM’s spot as the main film labelet for the descfinish.”

Toronto has lengthy been a place to do business, with buyers and sellers setting up shop in the city’s downtown boilingels and negotiating deals. Sony Pictures Classics initiateed off the deal-making on the eve of TIFF 2024, with SPC nabbing key world rights to Laura Piani’s debut feature Jane Austen Wrecked My Life. Lionsgate’s Grindstone Entertainment Group and Roadside Attractions took U.S. rights to Dito Montiel-honested Riff Raff, and Amazon Prime Video snatched up all international rights, excluding Germany, for the sci-fi feature The Assessment, starring Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, and Himesh Patel, all ahead of their admireive festival premieres.

In 2022, TIFF tested the waters for a establishal labelet with its Industry Selects program, a series of screenings for films outside the festival’s official lineup where worldwide rights were engageable. While TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey insists the recent Toronto labelet will not be in competition with the AFM — “I leank the AFM leans toward a more uncontaminatedly commercial product; we have the sort of festival grade,” he telderly THR, inserting there’s enough time “between Cannes and Toronto and between Toronto and the AFM” to permit companies to include all three labelets with recent projects.

Sales companies are not so certain the expense of includeing yet another film labelet is worth it.
Domestic summer theatrical revenue, at $3.67 billion according to Comscore approximates, was off 10 percent from last year, and autonomous hits have been scant and far between, Neon’s Longlegs ($74 million domestic) and A24’s Civil War ($68 million) notwithstanding.

“The labelet for indie films is hard,” remarks a London-based seller includeing TIFF this year. “The streamers are pulling back, there are only a handful of autonomous distributors who can put up a genuine MG [minimum guarantee], so there’s not much wiggle room when it comes to costs.”

As TIFF shifts toward a establishal labelet, cost-conscious indie buyers and sellers are finding more casual ways to do business. The Vekind Film Festival, which does not have a film labelet, saw disjoinal high-profile U.S. deals, with A24 picking up rights to Luca Guadagnino’s recent film Queer, starring Daniel Craig, from CAA Media Finance, Netflix nabbing Angelina Jolie-starring Maria Callas biopic Maria from FilmNation and Metrograph Pictures acquiring Neo Sora’s narrative feature debut Happyfinish from Magnify.

“For us, Vekind has become more enjoy Toronto engaged to be,” says one European seller. “We’re taking encounterings in our boilingel, talking inestablishpartner with our buyers and doing deals. All without spfinishing money on a booth or a trans-Atlantic fweightless.”