Why a Veteran Hollywood Dealmaker Skipped 2024 Sundance 

I chose not to attend the Sundance Film Festival this year. The decision was made for a variety of reasons, among them the weather, the uptick in COVID (which I’d rather not get again, thank you!) and, not least, my opinion that the field of quality motion pictures was a bit lacking and the atmosphere more of a “reunion” vibe than a vital business environment. 

Yes, there are always one or two crowd-pleasers on the film slate and one or two good old-fashioned bidding wars — with people famously sitting in their suites until 3 a.m., hashing it out, threatening to leave, coming back, impugning some ancestries and then getting it done. The latter didn’t fully manifest this year, but still, a $15 million-$20 million marquee deal or two just distracts from the otherwise lackluster sales.   

To be fair, I haven’t been back to Park City in several years. I’ve done my Sundance deals. In the past, I have almost invariably represented the selling/financing producers’ side, although in other contexts I have also advised distributors (including majors and mini-majors regarding complex chain-of-title and rights issues, often on a very, very pressured timeline), with a few forays into talent representation.  

In creating my new firm (coming soon!), I had initially thought about Sundance 2024 as a good coming-out party but revised my calculus when I realized the deal flow would be a bit depressed and I already have everyone’s email.   

With that in mind, this year’s Sundance hasn’t rekindled the indie theatrical market, which remains in transitional limbo. The indie film market’s emergence (or lack thereof) from the strikes and stresses on the finance market probably have more to do with the contraction of capital sources and the tightening of streaming acquisitions than with Sundance per se.  

Productions have been rushed and underfunded, and while the performances may remain compelling, some killer concepts are missing in both action and realization. The value of Sundance is in its presentation of original thought, creative inspiration, new vision.  

The fest invariably presents diamonds in the rough, some moments of genius, some applause-worthy screenings. And yet this year, if you checked the streets, the stats and the media, it was molasses — and understandably so.  

While I would’ve been happy to be corrected by festgoers during their busy time slipping and sliding through the crowds and into the bars on Main or Park, for the most part I feel like many of this year’s films lacked something in their haste to production and delivery.    

Next year will surely represent a loosening of the strings and thereby production creativity and values. 2023 was the year of the strike, make no mistake, and though some pictures made it through (often by way of waivers), that had a detrimental effect, not so much on the performances but in completing productions with a more than usually strained budget.   

Without getting into details, there were a LOT of constraints in financing strike-era films, from pricey bonds and insurance to inflated guild bonds to the rigors of at-risk financing, all coming together to create what I believe was some tentative filmmaking.  

I still believe some markets are vital and viable, and Sundance in particular may be that again, but it isn’t today. The business and the markets are still shaking loose of 2023, so this incarnation of Sundance isn’t really a fair indicator. Next year will necessarily be, and I absolutely plan to be there. 

Now, this isn’t to say I won’t gladly help producers and distributors make/finalize/clean up their deals and talent find their paths. Of course I will. But there were generally fewer and less lucrative and compelling deals to be made this time around — an off-year, as we see the unintended effects of the labor strife on the actual film market.   

So we’re not quite back yet, but that’s more a function of an adjustment period. And for my part, I hope that in the final analysis, this Sundance ends up more of a success, or perhaps more of a precursor to renewed success, than it appears to be.   

Gregg Ramer is an entertainment attorney in Los Angeles who has represented both talent and companies in addition to having worked for two major entertainment guilds.