The 2024 Sundance Film Festival wrapped on Sunday, concluding 10 days of Hollywood movers and shakers descending on the otherwise quaint mountain town of Park City, Utah. The festival — celebrating its fortieth anniversary — featured 91 projects from established genre filmmakers, indie darlings, and exciting up-and-comers (including a former president's daughter).
The festival's function as a dependable incubator for the independent film industry has somewhat diminished in the streaming era. Nevertheless, the 2024 edition produced a slew of notable deals and developments that will partially shape the year in movies. (Alessandra Lacorazza's In the Summers won the U.S. dramatic competition).
Not surprisingly, streamers shelled out the most cash this year, though every non-Netflix film listed below is slated to enjoy a theatrical run.
Recent Sundance standouts include Get Out (its $176 million domestic gross is the most for a Sundance product), Hereditary, and 2024 Best Picture nominee Past Lives. In 2021, Apple paid $25 million for the worldwide rights to eventual Best Picture winner CODA — breaking the previous Sundance record of $22.5 million (Palm Springs).
The 10 biggest 2024 Sundance deals
With all of that said, here are 10 of the biggest reported deals from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
10. Veni Vidi Vici
Before the festival commenced, Magnify purchased the sales rights to Daniel Hosel and Julia Niemann's send-up about a billionaire family in Austria who thinks they can actually get away with murder. (Saltburn meets Succession?)
Magnify previously handled sales for 2023 Sundance stand-outs Little Richard: I Am Everything and Kokomo City.
9. Ghostlight
Saint Frances, the debut feature from Alex Thompson and Kelly O'Sullivan, earned the Audience Award and Special Jury Award at SXSW and its share of critical acclaim and nods on the indie awards circuit.
The North American rights to their follow-up, Ghostlight — about a construction worker who joins a Shakespeare production only to find his life mimicking Romeo & Juliet — was acquired by IFC Films and Sapan Studio. IFC and Sapan backed The Taste of Things, which surprisingly missed out on an Oscar nod for International Feature Film. Terms are unknown, besides a limited theatrical release, per Variety.
8. Ibelin
Netflix paid an undisclosed amount for Benjamin Ree's documentary about the parents of a young man who dies of a muscular disease discovering his rich social life within the gaming community. The streaming giant has an impressive track record of supporting poignant documentaries (Crip Camp, 13th, My Octopus Teacher, American Factory, Icarus), so don't be shocked if Ibelin makes an imprint.
7. Skywalkers: A Love Story
Netflix wagered on another potential awards contender in the documentary space, acquiring Jeff Zimbalist's chronicle of a couple who embarks on a quest to scale skyscrapers around the glove to save their relationship. Skywalkers marks the latest entry in the subgenre of documentaries featuring people pushing the boundaries from high places (Free Solo, Man on Wire — a Sundance entry).
Two other documentary notables doc slate:
- Will & Harper (dir. Josh Greenbaum) traces a cross-country trip taken by Will Ferrell and his friend Harper Steele — a trans woman who worked with Ferrell at Saturday Night Live. Lots of thumbs-ups were given for the film.
- Devo (dir. Chris Smith) supposedly captures the rollicking, electric, 1980s new-wave band. Last fall, A24 re-released Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads' classic concert romp (the best movie I saw in a theater in 2023). If Smith's doc touches the zeitgeist, you could be hearing a lot of “Whip It” on TikTok in 2024.
6. Kneecap
Trainspotting meets Popstar?
Rich Peppiatt's druggy biopic parody/political mockudrama centers on an Irish rap group, starring the real-life band members, as they reimagine their origin story in Belfast (Michael Fassbender makes a memorable cameo, apparently).
Kneecap won the NEXT Audience Award. Its North American rights were acquired for an undisclosed amount by Sony Pictures Classics — the banner behind the 2013 Sundance hit Whiplash.
5. Presence
Speaking of genre shape-shifting: Steven Soderbergh — an OG Sundance darling — was back on the mountain, making waves with a doozy of a ghost story… told from the ghost's perspective.
Like all Soderbergh films, Presence — starring Lucy Liu and written by David Koepp (Jurassic Park) — was uniquely shot, edited, and presented. In general, the Oscar-winning director's prolific, playful pivot to experimental filmmaking (Kimi, No Sudden Move, High Flying Bird) as he’s reluctantly adapted to streaming has been a joy to consume.
The Ocean’s Eleven director sold Presence to Neon — the distributor behind Parasite.
4. A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg earned raves in Park City for his second directorial effort. A Real Pain co-stars Eisenberg and Emmy-winner Kieran Culkin as cousins reuniting for a Holocaust tour after the passing of their grandmother. The tragicomedy reportedly closed a $10 million worldwide rights deal with Searchlight Pictures.
Searchlight has distributed Best Picture winners Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave, Birdman, The Shape of Water, and Nomadland, as well as Poor Things, which earned 11 Oscar nods this year.
- Eisenberg's other film at Sundance? A gross-out comedy in which he and Riley Keough play Sasquatches — though it's far from the only oddball entry with major stars. Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun tag-team in Love Me, a romance about an AI-driven buoy and satellite. It took home the festival’s science-fiction prize.
- On the A24 front, Stewart's other film, Love Lies Bleeding, a queer wrestling drama, could generate buzz after its Mar. 8 release. Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man feels on-brand as a twisted, meta social satire, in which Sebastian Stan plays an actor with facial deformities who undergoes a procedure to make him look like a movie star. Finally, Jane Schoenburn's avant-garde teen horror flick I Saw The TV Glow — produced by Emma Stone — garnered raves.
3. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui's documentary about the life of Christopher Reeve is headed to Warner Bros. Discovery for a hefty $15 million. The film garnered a bidding war before even screening in Park City.
That's a lot of coin, but the tie-in is obvious. Back in the day, Warner Bros produced the Reeve-starring Superman films. DC, owned by WBD, is currently developing a Superman project helmed by James Gunn. According to Variety, Super/Man may be heavily promoted, distributed under the DC banner, run on linear TV (CNN), and hit Max.
2. My Old Ass
The largest sale for a narrative fiction production with a wide theatrical release goes to Amazon MGM, which spent about $15 million on Megan Park's coming-of-age dramedy about a teenager (Maisy Stella) who converses with her older self (Aubrey Plaza) while tripping on shrooms (it will quickly go on Prime).
This project has a lot going for it, besides Plaza. Margot Robbie, who produced Saltburn and, of course, Barbie, is backing the project (via LuckyChap), along with Indian Paintbrush, which finances Wes Anderson's projects. Park’s debut, The Fallout, starring Jenna Ortega, cleaned up at SXSW in 2021.
1. It’s What’s Inside
For the second year in a row, Netflix brokered the biggest deal on the mountain. Huzzah!
Earlier in the week, Netflix announced the impending departure of head of film Scott Stuber, who (unsuccessfully) championed theatrical releases and (successfully) spearheaded prestige films like Roma, Power of the Dog, and The Irishman. Fittingly, at Sundance, the dominant streamer splurged on Greg Jardin's chaotic, stylish, and twisty slasher about hot young people, Instagram, and parties gone askew. (Colman Domingo, up for an Oscar for the Netflix drama Rustin, is an executive producer.)
Netflix is going to drastically scale back its film output in 2024, so it’s noteworthy that they've tapped It's What's Inside as a potential hit. Then again, what's $17 million to a company worth $250 billion?
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