With a Toronto Film Festival lineup rich in premieres for movies that bowed at Cannes and Sundance, it’s a bit of an odd fall for festival titles, with far fewer premiere sales titles arriving without distribution in place. However, with TIFF’s first dedicated market and plenty of other festivals ahead, entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake, looks at the state of sales so far.
Festival Acquisitions
Among the titles that sold at the festivals themselves, we have River, going to Focus Features and Blumhouse Atomic Monster, which sold from TIFF’s Midnight Madness lineup. The deal is expected to cross the $10M mark, and seems a solid pick to, perhaps, be the next Obsession.
There’s also the docu-drama Rapinoe, tracing the career and life of US Women’s National Soccer star Megan Rapinoe. It was the opening night documentary at TIFF, and went to HBO Documentary Films for North American TV and streaming rights, at least.
Pre-Festival Acquisitions
Among titles that sold before their TIFF screenings, Babies went to Roadside Attractions and Vertical. This comedy, which showed in the TIFF Gala Presentation, centers around parenthood and prospective parenthood, and has Seth Rogen, who is having a strong year. The film is expected to release in early 2027, and was sold almost a year in advance of its premiere date.
Elsinore, which went to Focus Features, played at both Telluride and TIFF this year. Centering on the life of Ian Charleson and his work around the AIDS epidemic, the film is already dated for release in late November this year.
Netflix will also be bringing us Ink later this year, which played in competition at Venice as the opening night film, and covers the rise of The Sun tabloid newspaper. Netflix, however, doesn’t have the worldwide rights for the film, so we may see it as both a commercial and awards release.
Let’s hope to see many more added to this list as we get deeper into the fall festival season.
Film and Television 