Let’s see if that famously friendly Canadian crowd can convince Hollywood studios and streamers to take the indies back through customs from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
As always, a promising slate of star-studded films heads to TIFF in search of distribution. Some have thrilled audiences in Venice or Telluride, some showed just a brief glimpse of their wares to early suitors in Cannes, and some are on site next week to make splashy debuts just in time for the awards ceremony.
“We are still feeling the hangover from the past few years. The continued impact of COVID, and of course the strikes,” says Jessamine Burgum, who runs the indie production shop Pinky Promise with partner Kara Durrett. The pair are in town with one of the year’s most talked-about projects, “The Last Showgirl,” starring Pamela Anderson in a story of redemption and sequined headdresses.
“You have to believe in it,” Durrett said of the market, which she expects to be active but not yet quite up to fighting the weight. Burgum said wisely and a little wearily, “That’s another word for delusion. And that’s us.”
During conversations Variety had with several top sales agencies, a common silver lining emerged: internal production at the older studios and streamers is down overall, thanks largely to the crippling effect of the 2023 actors and writers strikes. This means buyers are desperately looking to end products that they can offer subscribers and moviegoers.
Here are more than a dozen of the strongest titles to hit the market:
The assessment
Form: Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, Himesh Patel
Director: Fleur Fortuin
Sales agents: UTA, WME
Why buyers cycle: Fortune’s latest is part of a burgeoning genre of dystopian dramas about how and when human reproduction takes place—and the consent it requires—in a not-too-distant future. Here Vikander stars as a civil servant who, after a seven-day evaluation, decides which couples have the right to have children.
On fast horses
Form: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Will Poulter, Diego Calva
Director: Daniel Minahan
Sales agents: UTA, Black Bear
Why buyers cycle: Director Minahan’s prestigious TV credits (“Game of Thrones,” “Six Feet Under,” “Fellow Travelers”) are applied here to the story of a couple whose post-Korean War existence is disrupted by the arrival of a seductive and dangerous family member (Elordi).
Friendship
Form: Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grazer
Director:Andrew DeYoung
Sale Agents: Fifth season, UTA
Why buyers cycle: Robinson, the king of modern cringe comedy, ventures into leading man territory with this feature from DeYoung (although we’re promised that all his terrifying quirks are still intact). The film follows a painfully average man whose new TV weatherman neighbor (Rudd) awakens the competitive beast in him.
Let’s not go to the dogs tonight
Form: Lexi Venter, Embeth Davidtz
Director: Embeth Davidtz
Sales agent: CAA
Why buyers cycle: Davidtz is one of the industry’s leading character actors. From ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’ to ‘Mad Men’ and cult horror classics like ’13 Ghosts’, Davidtz steps behind the camera for the first time to film the true story of a young girl coming of age during the Rhodesian bush war.
The brutalist
Form: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola
Director: Brady Corbet
Sales agents: CAA, Lead (*Focus Features already available internationally)
Why buyers cycle: Indie darling Corbet (“Vox Lux,” “The Childhood of a Leader”) returns with a long and punishing tale of the American Dream and its limitations. It follows a brilliant architect who flees post-war Europe in the late 1940s, encountering a wealthy and mysterious client who changes the course of his life and his art forever.
The last showgirl
Form: Pamela Anderson, Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, Dave Bautista
Director: Gia Coppola
Sales agents: CAA, Goodfellas, Utopia
Why buyers cycle: This title has been talked about since earlier this year, poised as an unexpected and rewarding dramatic turn from Anderson, who plays a dancer whose long-running Las Vegas review is suddenly halted. Buyers got a brief look at Cannes, but the finished film debuts here to big expectations and more buzz.
Chuck’s life
Form: Tom Hiddleston, Karen Gillan, Jacob Tremblay, David Dastmalchian, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Director: Mike Flanagan
Sales agents: UTA, FilmNation
Why buyers cycle: Hiddleston is ready for a star turn in the American market, and gets his chance here with director Flanagan (no stranger to the horror genre thanks to films like “Doctor Sleep” and “The Haunting of Hill House”). Based on a novella by Stephen King, the film unfolds over three chapters in the life of an ordinary man. Considering the creative talent involved, we expect anything but ordinary.
All of you
Form: Brett Goldstein, Imgoen Poots
Director: Willem Bruggen
Sales agent: MRC
Why buyers cycle: Hot off “Ted Lasso,” Goldstein wrote and stars in this romance, set in a near future where people can take a test to match them with their soulmates. Poots plays Goldstein’s character’s best friend, who triggers something profound in him.
The Deb
Form: Charlotte MacInnes, Natalie Abbott
Director: Rebel Wilson
Sales agent: WME
Why buyers cycle: Perhaps the loudest title to enter the festival thanks to a controversial legal battle between the director and her producers. Wilson makes her directorial debut with this musical comedy – a powerful story about two cousins in a small town searching for acceptance.
K pops
Form: Anderson .Paak, Soul Rasheed
Director: Anderson .Paak
Sales office: WME
Why buyers cycle: Grammy-winning musician Paak makes his feature film debut and stars opposite his real-life son Rasheed, in this family drama about a washed-up drummer who struggles to reconnect with his long-lost child.
Nutcrackers
Form: Ben Stiller, Linda Cardellini, Tim Heidecker
Director: David Gordon Green
Sales office: UTA
Why buyers cycle: Stiller’s day job overseeing the streaming hit “Severance” has kept him largely out of the picture. Here he returns with a starring role in this heartwarming look at a workaholic who unexpectedly becomes the caretaker of his orphaned nephews.
The penguin lessons
Form: Steve Coogan, Jonathan Pryce, a penguin
Director: Peter Cattaneo
Sales office: CAA, Rocket Science
Why buyers cycle: Coogan plays a cynical teacher who teaches privileged students in 1970s Argentina. However, his social conscience is awakened again when he rescues a penguin from an oil-covered beach. The uplifting film (complete with an adorable bird co-star) was directed by Cattaneo, known for finding the balance between humor and heart in “The Full Monty.”
Relay
Form: Lily James, Riz Ahmed
Director:David Mackenzie
Sales agents: CAA, UTA, Black Bear
Why buyers cycle: James plays a would-be whistleblower who harbors a trove of explosive secret documents involving her employer. But after she is mercilessly harassed by a black ops team brought in by the company, she hires a middleman, played by Ahmed, to return the documents. What follows is a cat-and-mouse game in which nothing is as it seems, including morality.
The happiest man in America
Form: Paul Walter Hauser, Shamier Anderson, David Straithairn
Director: Samir Oliveros
Sales agents: Main character, CAA
Why Buyers Cycle: Oliveros takes audiences back to the 1980s, when “Press Your Luck,” a hugely popular game show, ruled the airwaves. At least until a contestant named Michael Larson (Hauser) appeared on the program. Somehow, this unemployed ice cream truck driver from Ohio went on a game-breaking winning streak.
