While the signs on Main Street promoting the 2022 Sundance Film festival are up, this weekend was fairly quiet here in Park City. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Like so much in the last two years, the COVID virus was cited as the cause for the festival to go virtual for the second year in a row.
But while the crowds dressed in black and smoking cigarettes may not be overwhelming our restaurants and hotels, much of the business of Sundance will go on. Sundance is perhaps the most important showcase for independent films in the nation – and for filmmakers, the business of Sundance is all about getting distributed.
So how does the business of independent filmmaking work? How do films get made if there is no assurance of any kind of back-end revenue? What are the economics of making an independent film? Who buys films at Sundance and how do they decide what they are worth? And what happens to all those documentaries?
We are so lucky this morning to welcome back one of our favorite guests, Professor Peter Decherney of the University of Pennsylvania.