{"id":199,"date":"2026-05-19T06:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T06:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=199"},"modified":"2026-05-19T06:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T06:35:12","slug":"kicking-the-cannes-no-fun-at-the-beach-for-dealmakers-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=199","title":{"rendered":"Kicking the Cannes: No Fun at the Beach for Dealmakers This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tWhen the lights went up after the Cannes premiere of Jordan Firstman\u2019s\u00a0Club Kid<\/em>, the writer-director scooped up his 14-year-old co-star Reggie Absolom in his arms and started a chant in his honor. He knew he had a winner.<\/p>\n

Read more J-pop Trio Number_i Signs With Atlantic Records, Working on New Music Out Later This Year<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tA few days and nights of a bidding war later, he was proved right. A24 laid down eight figures for world rights to Firstman\u2019s debut feature \u2014 outmaneuvering Focus Features, Searchlight, Netflix and Mubi to land this year\u2019s Cannes success story. For a market that had been crying out for a genuine breakout, the reported $17 million worldwide deal was the shot of adrenaline everyone needed.<\/p>\n

\nClub Kid<\/em>, which premiered in Un Certain Regard, stars Firstman as a gay, drug-addled party promoter who has spent a decade on the dance floors and in the darkrooms with no particular plan for the future \u2014 until the son he never knew he had shows up on his doorstep. Warm, funny and genuinely touching, but with plenty of edge, the film sparked the kind of competitive feeding frenzy that used to be a regular feature of the March\u00e9. This year, it was the exception.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe other marquee deal came courtesy of Amazon, which inked the biggest package sale of the market, picking up most international rights to\u00a0Pumping Black<\/em>, a new psychological thriller from\u00a0Fresh<\/em>\u00a0director Mimi Cave, set in the cutthroat world of competitive cycling and starring Jonathan Bailey and Natalie Portman. Two eight-figure deals to close the Cannes Film Market. On paper, a strong finish. In practice, a pair of bright lights in what was otherwise a pretty dim room.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was business being done in Cannes. The hallways of the Palais des Festivals were busy enough and there were plenty of packages on offer \u2014 though most got announced late, leaving buyers griping they barely had time to read scripts, much less make offers. Much of the real dealmaking will happen post-Cannes, after international buyers go home and crunch the numbers. Which is another way of saying the market didn\u2019t really close \u2014 it just adjourned.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s symptomatic of something deeper. The independent film industry is in transition, and nobody has quite figured out what it\u2019s transitioning into.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe old model \u2014 the one that sustained the indie ecosystem for decades \u2014 is visibly fraying. At its center was the pay-one television window: a predictable, lucrative revenue stream that allowed distributors to take risks on pre-sales, backing films before a frame was shot based on talent and a promising pitch. Streaming platforms, negotiating their own deals on their own terms, have largely killed that window. What\u2019s left for independent distributors is a landscape stripped of the financial cushions that once made risk-taking viable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBuyers are very specific about what they want and how much risk they are willing to take,\u201d says Matt Brodlie of Upgrade Productions. Deals for projects above a certain budget level, or without a clear and obvious path to commercial success, are taking a lot longer to close.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor producers, says David Garrett of Mr. Smith Entertainment, who has been navigating these markets for decades, that means \u201crelying more on equity financing and soft money to get movies financed.\u201d The result is a buyer\u2019s market without enough buyers \u2014 or at least without buyers willing to commit large sums up front. Films that would once have sparked competitive bidding are screening to polite attention and noncommittal follow-up meetings.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Masters of the Universe\u2019: First Reactions From the Premiere<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tBut here\u2019s the thing about a vacuum: something always fills it. And this year at Cannes, you can see the outlines of what that something might be \u2014 not one model, but several.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne answer, increasingly convincing, to the challenge of independent film distribution is community. Watermelon Pictures, the Chicago-based company co-founded by brothers Badie and Hamza Ali, which focuses primarily on films about the Palestinian and Arab experience and has built its entire operation around the idea that a deeply engaged, underserved audience is a more reliable foundation than any pre-sale agreement. The distributor deploys WhatsApp groups, local community leaders, and social media influencers to drive audiences to cinemas, with remarkable results: Three of its Palestinian-focused films \u2014\u00a0Palestine 36<\/em>,\u00a0All That\u2019s Left of You<\/em>, and\u00a0The Voice of Hind Rajib<\/em>, made the Oscar shortlist for best international feature, with\u00a0The Voice of Hind Rajib<\/em>\u00a0scoring a nomination.<\/p>\n

\n\tA faith-based variant of the same logic has produced even more dramatic results. Faith-based distributor Angel Studios (King of Kings<\/em>,\u00a0The Sound of Freedom<\/em>) has been scaling rapidly across Europe, Latin America, and Asia.\u00a0The Chosen<\/em>, the multi-season drama about the life of Jesus, fully financed by the Christian nonprofit Come and See Foundation, has grossed more than $120 million worldwide through theatrical releases of its episodes. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are really a fan-based production company,\u201d says Mark Sourian, president of production at 5&2 Studios, which produces\u00a0The Chosen<\/em>. \u201cIn the 21st century, if you are not in direct connection with your audience, if you are just letting your film \u2018speak for itself,\u2019 you are going to lose control of the conversation.\u201d 5&2 Studios were in Cannes promoting their first stand-alone feature,\u00a0The Chosen: The Crucifixion<\/em>, which Amazon MGM is releasing next spring.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat lesson of going direct to fans is one that has been absorbed by a generation of online creators now moving into features with their audiences already in tow. As\u00a0Club Kid<\/em>\u2018s Firstman (who started on Instagram) and horror filmmaker Mark Edward Fischbach (aka Markiplier), a YouTube influencer whose self-distributed\u00a0Iron Lung<\/em>\u00a0has grossed more than $50 million worldwide, have both demonstrated. Firstman\u2019s social media fluency wasn\u2019t incidental to A24\u2019s interest in\u00a0Club Kid<\/em>, it was part of the package.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there\u2019s the re-release model, less flashy but quietly significant. Warner Bros.\u2019 new Clockwork label presented a restored\u00a0The Devils<\/em>\u00a0in Cannes Classics and Cineverse screened a new 20tth Anniversary, 4K version of Guillermo del Toro\u2019s\u00a0Pan\u2019s Labyrinth\u00a0<\/em>ahead of theatrical runs for the films this fall. Del Toro himself made the case simply: \u201cThe future of theatrical is a mixture of reissues and new movies. You put\u00a0Road Warrior<\/em>\u00a0out on a big screen, I\u2019m there. You put\u00a0The Devils<\/em>, I\u2019m there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of these models is a clean replacement for what the indie industry has lost. But taken together, they suggest the audience for independent film hasn\u2019t gone anywhere. It\u2019s just waiting to be reached in new ways \u2014 whether that\u2019s a church network, a WhatsApp group, or a comment section on YouTube. The dealmaking machinery of Cannes may be sputtering. The people willing to reinvent it are already here.<\/p>\n

Read more Marvel Comics Shake-Up: TV Chief Brad Winderbaum Takes on Publishing as Veteran Dan Buckley Exits<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A24 and Amazon added some last minute sizzle, but the real story was the deals that didn\u2019t get done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-cannes-2026"],"yoast_head":"\nKicking the Cannes: No Fun at the Beach for Dealmakers This Year - US Property Moves<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=199\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kicking the Cannes: No Fun at the Beach for Dealmakers This Year - US Property Moves\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A24 and Amazon added some last minute sizzle, but the real story was the deals that didn\u2019t get done.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/?p=199\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"US Property Moves\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-19T06:35:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/uspropertymoves.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/b4fbc4e7f92a27b538848ad2144ede14.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1440\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"810\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/?p=199#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/?p=199\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/f6dcb1ef8e64fe67b72b772b81aa822c\"},\"headline\":\"Kicking the Cannes: No Fun at the Beach for Dealmakers This Year\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-19T06:35:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/?p=199\"},\"wordCount\":1158,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/?p=199#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/b4fbc4e7f92a27b538848ad2144ede14.webp\",\"keywords\":[\"Cannes 2026\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/?p=199#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/?p=199\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/uspropertymoves.com\\\/?p=199\",\"name\":\"Kicking the Cannes: No Fun at the Beach for Dealmakers This Year - 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