CAA’s Media Finance Co-Head Roeg Sutherland gave an upbeat assessment of the state of the indie movie sector as the European Film Market kicked into gear on Friday.
“We’ve showed up with about 20 [projects] and we’ll walk away with 20 movies that are going to go into production and some relatively sizeable deals,” said Sutherland.
Speaking at a packed out EFM masterclass on film financing and packaging, Sutherland acknowledged that the L.A. fires had meant for a tough start to the year for the indie community, but said overall the outlook was bright.
He cited the recent box office success for Focus Features with Nosferatu, Fox Searchlight with A Complete Unknown and Neon with Longlegs.
“People are actually coming back out to watch adult dramas, I realize Longlegs is not an adult drama, but the other ones are,” he said, also noting the box office performances of awards season frontrunners The Brutalist and Anora.
He said part of the current positivity was linked to producers budgeting their projects keenly.
“The Brutalist was made for $9M, and Anora, six or seven, that’s fiscally responsible. It means you can take risks. There’s less pressure. It means Neon can keep a movie in theaters for a lot longer and platform a movie so it can find an audience over the course of 45 or 60 days, as opposed to you have so much pressure because you have such a huge equity gap against North America, that you have to rely on the opening week, otherwise you’re in trouble financially.”
Sutherland was equally bullish about the international market, even if many B.O. markets in Europe (apart from France) stagnated in 2024, and in some places dipped, such as Germany.
He also suggested that streamers were also continuing to back independent films, albeit reluctantly, and not necessarily due to subscriber demand.
“They don’t want to make independent films, but they understand that to to be relevant in the world that we live in, to be able to track the sort of filmmakers they want to be in business with, they have to operate in that space,” he said.
With the EFM in its second day, Sutherland suggested he was optimistic that some good deals would go down this year.
“Foreign sales are doing really well. We’re in the middle of the market right now. Movies that sell are selling at pre-pandemic prices, and that’s not just the U.S. deal,” he said.
“After Covid, there was a hysterical response from foreign distributors – ‘What are they going to do?’ – and you’ve seen how well Europe has bounced back, Asia has bounced back, and that people care less about American films now and care more about local language products.”
Speaking to an audience – made up mainly of emerging professionals and a smattering of veterans – Sutherland dispelled the myth that packaging a project for the market was uniquely about signing stars.
“We’re not people that are really attracted by actor-driven projects. There are movies stars, if Brad Pitt wants to make a movie, you’re not going to have any problem setting up the Brad Pitt movie, but for the most part what we focus on is new ideas,” he said.
“That seems obvious, but it isn’t because most people retread old ideas. We find a lot of the new ideas come from Korea, from Scandinavia… from places outside of the United States. Whether you love Anora or not, whether you love Emilia Pérez, or not, those are original ideas… and we haven’t had that for a long time. “
