As we prepare for awards season, what can the festival sales so far tell us? Building on our earlier roundup of the Cannes sales to date, we have entertainment attorney Brandon Blake at Blake & Wang P.A.
Potential for The Right Buyer
While Venice does not have a dedicated film market in the way that Cannes does, its hits (and misses) can still tell us a lot about what we could see hitting the awards scene. For TIFF, this will be its last year without a dedicated market, with a new initiative kicking off from the 2026 iteration.
Perhaps one of the most interesting “acquisitions” out of this year’s Telluride festival, however, is the sale of Tuner to Black Bear, also its creator. With Black Bear having freshly launched its own distribution arm, keeping another of their festival titles (Christy) for themselves, it was speculated whether they would retain distribution rights for the thriller as well. Christy, particularly, has immense potential for the awards circuit.
Other Names to Know
Row K Entertainment has been an active buyer, taking the distribution rights to Poetic License and Charlie Harper (both TIFF Special Presentations) as well as Dead Man’s Wire, which played out of competition at Venice. We may see Dead Man’s Wire pushed out later this fall in anticipation of awards qualification. Row K Entertainment is a brand-new distributor, making their first acquisitions particularly noteworthy. We see a similar situation with Erupcja, which went to 1-2 Special, another new face on the distribution scene.
Netflix, meanwhile, took home rights to Cover-Up, with Paramount+ netting itself Adulthood, a black comedy that is already heading to streaming. Fittingly, Man on the Run went to Amazon MGM. Sony could be eying awards success with anime to build on the fantastic box office run for Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, acquiring Scarlet from the Venice Out of Competition circuit for release later this year.
All in all, TIFF, Venice, and Telluride have brought some buzzy titles to life, and it is good to see the pace of sales accelerate as we head towards awards season.
Film and Television 