American Film Market 2013: Day One
The American Film Market started back in 1981 and quickly built a name for itself as a go-to event for closing deals. The yearly event functions sort of like a film festival minus the awards. Without those contests, acquisition and distribution monopolize the news and excitement surrounding the weeklong film fiesta. On its website, the Market boasts the potential for over $800 million in deals during its sojourn in Santa Monica. Any reason for attending rests solely in buying and selling—no surprise there considering the word “market” is part of the name.
With the film industry’s domestic profits in flux (just read anyone’s analysis of this summer’s box-office results), overseas success has to pull more and more weight. This is where the importance of distribution and acquisition comes in: most of the deals occurring in Santa Monica have to do with distribution rights in territories across the world. For example, last year’s “Flight” and “Pain and Gain” (which already had closed their US distribution deals) got the chance to sell to certain international markets because the company Sierra/Affinity picked up the rights.
Back in 2011, the Market had been negotiating deals to move the event to LA Live in Downtown Los Angeles. Variety then confirmed it would stay in Santa Monica through at least 2017.
Today marks the first day for the event and news has already been circulating since earlier this week. Deadline updates throughout the day with news about breaking deals, and here are some of the biggest to happen so far.
FilmNation Entertainment has jumped on to Daniel Radcliffe’s upcoming project “Tokyo Vice” with plans to finance and sell international rights for the film. Daniel Radcliffe stars as an American reporter covering the dangerous Japanese underworld. Jake Adelstein’s memoir of the same name serves as the basis for the film. J.T. Rogers is currently penning the adaptation and USC Alum Anthony Mandler is set to direct.
Aaron Eckhart, who starred in this summer’s “Olympus Has Fallen” (and will return for the sequel “London Has Fallen”), has signed on to star in the thriller “Fade Out.” The film comes from first-time director Robert Salerno. Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Christofer wrote the original script. In “Fade Out,” Aaron Eckhart plays a screenwriter whose reality and fantasy start to combine as he writes a new script.
Fear not “Orange is the New Black” fans: you’ll get to see Taylor Schilling again while waiting for season two to release. She stars in “Stay,” an entry in the Toronto International Film Festival that just got its rights picked up by Gravitas Ventures. The company aims for a first-quarter 2014 VOD and theatrical release. The film comes from Aislinn Hunter’s novel with Wiebke von Carolsfeld as writer and director of the adaptation. Schilling plays a woman whose relationship with a middle-aged professor encounters an unexpected pregnancy.
These deals mark the tip of the iceberg of what will surely transpire over the next seven days.
Reach Staff Reporter Annie Lloyd here; follow her on Twitter here.