Variety
Though long expected, Disney’s announcement Friday that it will scale back Miramax was just more downer news for the already browbeaten indie film community. The larger studio will now handle “certain marketing, distribution, operations and administrative support functions from its Burbank headquarters,” Disney said. That translates to an almost 75% reduction in staff to just 20 remaining execs. On the whole, the shrinking indie slots at studios spell ongoing tough times for filmmakers. Some are already crying doom over what the Miramax cuts will mean for acquisitions at Sundance in January. Despite the fact that the label made very few pickups in recent years, the notion that just one more possible buyer was taken off the field is cause for a full indie orange alert. Some say the indies are already on red alert. One sales agent reported that U.S. distribs can now play hardball when it comes to paying filmmakers and sellers. “People are behaving really badly. They’re basically saying, ‘We’ll pay you whenever we want to pay you, no matter what the contract says,’ ” the seller lamented. “There were 20 places to distribute your film before, and now there are 10.”
FILMS FINDING A TOUGHER MARKET IN TORONTO
New York Times
As of Monday afternoon, the moment of reckoning was fast approaching for the hundreds of filmmakers, stars, executives and others who have gathered at the Toronto International Film Festival to sell their wares, and, beyond that, to discern the fate of an independent-movie business that is no longer quite as grand as its glittering conclaves. Off screen, the festival’s theme has been one of distress. In an opening-night address on Thursday, Piers Handling, the festival’s director and chief executive, said that “economic calamity” — in the world at large and in the film industry — had informed the year’s film selections. At the halfway mark in the 10-day gathering, the vast majority of more than 140 films that showed up in search of American distribution were in the same boat, according to a count by the Indiewire news service. There had been no sale to match last year’s auction of “The Wrestler,” whose Toronto screening set off a bidding war that left the winner, Fox Searchlight Pictures, in possession of a prize contender. Neither had anyone yet seen a new “Slumdog Millionaire,” which roused the crowd in Toronto a year ago and went on to win eight Academy Awards for Fox Searchlight and its various partners on the film.
