Context for readers: Independent movies debut at major festivals like the Sundance Film Festival to drum up audience and critical enthusiasm. They’re also seeking out distribution from various movie studios.
During the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, there were no instances echoing that time Amazon shelled out $46 million for various 2019 Sundance Film Festival titles. Fox Searchlight (now known as Searchlight Pictures under Disney ownership) didn’t buy a thing at this year’s Sundance after picking up countless titles at past editions of the festival, including eventual Oscar darlings and A Real Pain. Instead, the news reports were all about how this year’s Sundance was devoid of large deals as the event actually unfolded.
Three months later, more and more deals are coming together for various 2025 Sundance titles. However, the gradual slow-burn approach to executing these deals paints a picture of what American indie cinema’s future looks like…as well as the pressure put on certain arthouse distributors.
The good news is, while initial January 2025 headlines were bleak about the lack of initial 2025 Sundance deals (“is this the end of indie cinema?!?”), things have actually picked up for 2025 Sundance titles. As early as one week into February 2025, Variety declared mounting Sundance 2025 sales were "[bringing] hope to a challenged industry." Now, as of this writing (April 10, 2025), titles like The Thing With Feathers, Twinless, and The Things You Kill have all secured U.S. distribution in the past week. Currently, 19 2025 Sundance titles have secured U.S. distribution. That's down from 30 from 2024 Sundance Film Festival, but the gap is clearly closing with each and every day. Meanwhile, 2025 is at about half of 2019's 38 Sundance acquisitions, a sign of how the indie market has been struggling since COVID-19 shut down theaters.
Studios taking their time to acquire projects suggest this might just be the new norm going forward for big film festivals. The streaming explosion is over. Every company is cutting costs and being more reserved. All-night bidding wars are finished, especially as precarious distributors seek to avoid repeating past instances of studios overpaying for Sundance darlings. Remember how Happy, Texas and Hamlet 2 scored extravagant Sundance purchases but then flamed out in theaters? The norm now may just be these kinds of purchases taking place over multiple months rather than in a handful of days.
A new status quo in how indie distributors acquire titles from Sundance and other major film festivals is understandable. What’s more worrisome is how the still sluggish 2025 Sundance market reflects harmful norms in the current indie cinema. As I wrote recently for Pajiba, the American indie movie scene is suffering from the closure of arthouse theaters, studios avoiding anything remotely “controversial” (including acclaimed titles like Ponyboi focusing on LGBTQIA_+ individuals), and major corporations with money to burn (like Disney) shrinking indie movie distributors like Searchlight Pictures. Corporate monopolies and creative cowardice are severely limiting what titles get sent to arthouse theaters. Those factors are also preventing many features at events like the 2025 Sundance Film Festival from getting essential distribution.
Meanwhile, that corporate consolidation has led to fewer arthouse labels existing. That’s put the pressure on the few surviving entities in the marketplace. Briarcliff Entertainment, for instance, acquired The Thing With Feathers while Roadside Attractions picked up two 2025 Sundance titles. Both of these labels, unfortunately, have absolutely terrible track records with getting indie movies out to the masses. Remember how badly Roadside bungled the theatrical release of 2024 Sundance gem Exhibiting Forgiveness? Now that (among other troubling corporate developments) Searchlight barely releases any movies and Amazon MGM Studios has left the indie acquisition space, indie cinema fans just have to pray the likes of Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment suddenly learn how to properly release movies.
Meanwhile, these 2025 Sundance Film Festival titles must face a theatrical landscape where it’s more challenging than ever to promote indie movies. Now that so many traditional modes of promoting movies (like TV commercials and newspaper ads) reach fewer people than ever, it’s difficult to get something like 2024 indie Bob Trevino Likes It to the masses. At a 2025 CinemaCon panel, Neon head honcho Tom Quinn suggested that more drastic promotional maneuvers should be taken to emphasize indie movies, like putting aside one or two trailers before big blockbusters for indie titles.
The last trailer before my Longlegs screening last year was for Anora, which undoubtedly was the first time many of the people in the theater had ever even heard of Sean Baker! That’s the kind of high-profile promotion we need for these titles. Imagine if buzzy 2025 Sundance titles like Sorry, Baby or The Ugly Stepsister got to debut trailers on Captain America: Brave New World or the next Mission: Impossible. That’s just one of many possibilities for reminding people of the value of arthouse titles. Such tactics could also make it easier for distributors to see a path towards 2025 Sundance titles (and other film festival darlings) actually leaving a mark theatrically.
It's so good to see more and more 2025 Sundance titles securing distribution, especially since nearly all of them have gone to theatrical distributors rather than a big streamer. However, even with more and more studios picking up indie films from this January 2025 occasion, American indie cinema’s ongoing turmoil hasn’t waned. Just look at the cancellation of all those Humanities grants for documentaries, a development that could permanently jeopardize this artform. A new norm is unquestionably forming for indie features that goes far beyond when 2025 Sundance films get picked up.