The overriding message this market? “There’s a lot”.
“A few weeks ago we thought there would a decent amount but, wow, there’s a lot”, one packaging agent told us.
They continued: “After a busy EFM, once again it feels like a healthy market in terms of product. The early responses from the sellers and indie buyers has been good. Those international distributors have re-stabilised their business somewhat, more so than the streamers. We’ll know more in a week but at the moment there are plenty of decently priced projects with meaningful actors, directors and scripts, and there is a good spread of projects.”
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There’s Kristen Stewart returning on a vampire movie, Dwayne Johnson in a big-budget A24 wrestling movie, Mahershalah Ali in a gritty big-canvas crime movie, a couple of Jason Statham projects for those who want brawn, historical drama with Russell Crowe, a YA empowerment pic with Chris Pratt, and there’s musical comedy with Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas for those who want something lighter.
As buyers point out to us, the sheer volume means that some of the scripts aren’t hitting quality wise, but there is a solid nucleus of good ones. The safe space of genre is being leaned into with plenty of thrillers and horror. Long-awaited international buyer collaboration is coming into effect via groups like the MadRiver consortium of buyers and the Vuelta group. Hunting in packs may be a way into the best content.
Domestic remains a major challenge in terms of acquisitions: “The US is really tough,” one packager told us. “The values domestically are probably a third or quarter what they were even two years ago. We need a healthy ecosystem from the top to the bottom of the chain so in an ideal world even the smaller distributors would still have their TV deals in place.”
But the mood is one of optimism that buying will get done. “I think the A and B level distributors will be biting in Cannes — the studios and streamers,” another seller told us. “There weren’t a lot of US deals in the end at the EFM but there were a number of offers made. We’re already getting interest from buyers of different sizes.”
It was a stacked EFM slate and solid dealmaking was done even if there weren’t quite as many splashy announcements made. Our Cannes hot list below has 20 more projects (coming in at close to 50 pre-sale titles) on it than our EFM list and more are still being announced.
The festival lineup also offers opportunities with movies such as Donald Trump pic The Apprentice starring Sebastian Stan and Jacques Audiard’s English-language film Emilia Perez with Selena Gomez among intriguing projects expected to sell. Coppola’s Megalopolis is also in play — as we revealed it has recently been picked up by some major international buyers.
Below we run down some of the many English-language packages on sale at their first market. This is a non-exhaustive list.
Under The Stars
Dir: Michelle Danner
Cast: Toni Collette, Andy Garcia, Alex Pettyfer & Eva De Dominici
Plot: Pic follows a struggling romance novelist stuck in a passionless relationship. When he goes to Italy looking for inspiration, he unexpectedly finds the girl of his dreams.
Sales: Arclight (international), Capstone (domestic)
The Yellow Tie
Dir: Serge Ioan Celebidachi
Cast: John Malkovich and Sean Bean
Plot: The Yellow Tie follows the extraordinary life of Sergiu Celibidache, one of the most celebrated classical music conductors of the twentieth century.
Sales: VMI Worldwide (world)
Kill Me
Dir: Peter Warren
Cast: Allison Williams and Charlie Day
Plot: In Kill Me, Jimmy (Charlie Day) wakes up in a bathtub after having tried to kill himself. Or, at least, that’s what it looks like to his friends and family. Jimmy is pretty sure he didn’t do it…Maybe. Together with Margot (Williams), the 911 operator who took his call, Jimmy sets out on a mission to solve a vitally important whodunit: did someone try to kill him, or are they chasing the specter of depression?
Sales: XYZ Films (world)
Way Of The Warrior Kid
Dir: McG
Cast: Chris Pratt
Plot: Not yet known.
Sales: UTA Independent Film Group and FilmNation
Double Booked
Dir: Adam Scott
Cast: Sterling K. Brown, Zazie Beetz, and Alexandra Daddario
Plot: Double Booked follows a successful self-help writer (Scott) and his heavily pregnant wife (Beetz) who organize a weekend away at a secluded lodge, only to encounter another couple (Brown and Daddario) at their cabin when they arrive. With a blizzard moving in they are forced to spend the night together, and what seems like an innocent system error turns into a chilling battle of deceit with deadly consequences.
Sales: Protagonist Pictures (international), UTA Independent Film Group, and CAA (domestic).
Mansour
Dir: Romuald Boulanger
Cast: Mansour Bahrami
Plot: The film follows the journey of celebrity tennis player Mansour Bahrami from post-Revolutionary Iran, to exile and poverty in France, and then fame on the international circuit.
Sales: France TV
Reckoner
Dir: Nissar Modi
Cast: Noomi Rapace
Plot: The film follows an affluent woman’s (Rapace) carefully constructed life disrupted by a young man connected to a tightly held secret from her past.
Sales: XYZ Films (world)
Nuremberg
Dir: James Vanderbilt
Cast: Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, and Michael Shannon
Plot: Nuremberg chronicles the eponymous trials held by the Allied Forces against the defeated Nazi regime. The film will center on American psychiatrist Douglas Kelley, who is tasked with determining whether Nazi prisoners are fit to stand trial for their war crimes and finds himself in a complex battle of wits with Hermann Göring, Hitler’s right-hand man.
Sales: WME Independent (world)
Long Shadows
Dir: William Shockley
Cast: Dermot Mulroney, Jacqueline Bisset, and Dominic Monaghan.
Plot: The story is a tale of love and vengeance. Synopsis reads: Mulroney plays Dallas Garrett, a former outlaw gunslinger with the wisdom of regret, who serves as a mentor to a young man trying to find his way in the world.
Sales: Concourse Media (international), UTA (domestic)
Flesh of the Gods
Dir: Panos Cosmatos
Cast: Kristen Stewart and Oscar Isaac.
Plot: The film follows Raoul and Alex, a married couple in glittering ’80s L.A. who descend each evening from their luxury skyscraper condo and head into an electric nighttime realm. When they cross paths with the mysterious and enigmatic Nameless and her hard-partying cabal, Raoul and Alex are seduced into a glamorous, surrealistic world of hedonism, thrills, and violence.
Sales: XYZ Films (international), CAA and WME (domestic)
The Last Showgirl
Dir: Gia Coppola
Cast: Pamela Anderson.
Plot: Anderson plays a seasoned showgirl who must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run. As a dancer in her fifties, she struggles with what to do next. As a mother, she strives to repair a strained relationship with her daughter, who often took a backseat to her showgirl family.
Sales: Goodfellas and Utopia (international), CAA Media Finance (domestic)
Power Ballad
Dir: John Carney
Cast: Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas.
Plot: Power Ballad will chart the story of a wedding singer (Rudd), a rock star (Jonas), and the song that comes between them.
Sales: WME Independent (international), 30WEST, WME Independent, and UTA Independent Film Group (domestic)
Occupation
Dir: Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi
Plot: Occupation is based on Peter Pomerantsev’s May 2022 article for The Atlantic entitled “We Can Only Be Enemies”, which follows a Ukrainian family whose house is shelled at the onset of the war. Unable to reach Kyiv, they return to their village. Taking refuge in their bomb shelter, they have no choice but to cohabitate with the Russian solider responsible for the bombardment. Production will begin in Poland this fall.
Sales: Goodfellas (international), 30WEST, Anonymous Content and CAA Media Finance (domestic)
Sacrifice
Dir: Romain Gavras
Cast: Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Salma Hayek Pinault and Brendan Fraser.
Plot: A high-end charity gala is raided by a violent group of radicals on a mystical quest to fulfill a prophecy.
Sales: CAA Media Finance and Rocket Science (world)
Norah
Dir: Tawfik Alzaidi
Cast: Yaqoub Alfarhan and Abdullah Alsadhan.
Plot: Set in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s when artistic expression was banned, the feature follows a rookie teacher and clandestine artist Nader, who is sent to a remote village for his first post where he connects with a young woman, whose life has been stifled by the era of conservatism..
Sales: Cercamon (international)
The Magic Faraway Tree
Dir: Ben Gregor
Cast: Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy
Plot: Based on The Faraway Tree series of novels for children, the feature will follow Polly and Tim and their children Beth, Joe and Fran – a modern family who find themselves forced to relocate to the remote English countryside. Garfield will play Tim and Foy will take on the role of Polly.
Sales: Palisades Park Pictures (world) with CAA Media Finance co-repping U.S. rights
Alpha
Dir: Julia Ducournau
Cast: Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim
Plot: Not yet known.
Sales: Filmnation and Charades.
Jimpa
Dir: Sophie Hyde
Cast: Olivia Colman and John Lithgow
Plot: The pic follows Hannah (Colman), a mother who takes her trans non-binary teenager Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde) to Amsterdam to visit their gay grandfather Jimpa (Lithgow). But Frances’ desire to stay with Jimpa for a year abroad means Hannah is forced to re-consider her beliefs about parenting and finally confront old stories about the past.
Sales: Protagonist Pictures (international), CAA Media Finance (Domestic)
Head Games
Dir: Anthony Mandler
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson and Henry Golding
Plot: In the sci-fi thriller, a corporate spy poses as a personal chef to infiltrate the villa of a former founder of a neuroprosthetics firm in order to steal his seismic-shifting new invention. Nothing is as it seems as the mind games begin.
Sales: A Higher Standard (international), CAA Media Finance and Range Media Partners (Domestic)
The Death Of Robin Hood
Dir: Michael Sarnoski
Cast: Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer
Plot: The film is a darker reimagining of the classic Robin Hood tale. Set of its time, the film will see the title character grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder, a battleworn loner who finds himself gravely injured and in the hands of a mysterious woman who offers him a chance at salvation.
Sales: WME Independent
11817
Dir: Louis Leterrier
Cast: Greta Lee and Kingsley Ben-Adir
Plot: In 11817, inexplicable forces trap a family of four inside their house indefinitely. As both modern luxuries and life or death essentials begin to run out, the family must learn how to be resourceful to survive and outsmart who – or what – is keeping them trapped.
Sales: Rocket Science (international), CAA Media Finance (North America)
The Smashing Machine
Dir: Benny Safdie
Cast: Dwayne Johnson
Plot: In The Smashing Machine, Johnson will play Mark Kerr, the legendary MMA fighter from the no-holds-barred era of UFC.
Sales: A24
Untitled Sydney Sweeney boxing film
Dir: David Michôd
Cast: Sydney Sweeney
Plot: A biopic following the life and career of Christy Martin, America’s most well-known female boxer in the 1990s often known as the “female Rocky.”
Sales: Black Bear (international), UTA Independent Film Group, AC Independent, and Black Bear (U.S.).
Belly Of The Beast
Dir: Andrew Haigh
Cast: Ben Stiller and Colin Farrell
Plot: The feature will tell the timely and true story of the unlikely friendship between notorious literary titan Norman Mailer (Stiller) and his protégé, Jack Henry Abbott (Farrell).
Sales: mk2 films (international),UTA Independent Film Group, CAA Media Finance, and Village Roadshow Pictures (North American).
77 Blackout
Dir: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Cast: Mahershala Ali and Tom Hardy
Plot: In 1977, five rogue police officers formulate a plan to rob three criminal strongholds – the Hong Kong Triads, the Italian Mafia, and the Harlem Mob – all in one night. When a blackout sweeps the city the night of the robbery, the crew is forced to navigate a hellish landscape as years of being overworked and underpaid forces each of them to confront their own morality.
Sales: Black Bear (international) and WME (North American).
Let The Evil Go West
Dir: Christian Tafdrup
Cast: Sebastian Stan and Lily James
Plot: Let the Evil Go West follows a railroad worker who stumbles upon a fortune under deeply disturbing circumstances. As horrifying visions and manifestations drive him toward madness, his wife becomes convinced that an evil presence has attached itself to their family.
Sales: CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group (domestic), north.five.six (international)
Wife And Dog
Dir: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Under wraps.
Plot: Under wraps.
Sales: Black Bear
The Ploughmen
Dir: Ed Harris
Cast: Owen Teague, Nick Nolte, and Bill Murray.
Plot: The film is set in the wilderness of Montana, where a strange friendship develops between a haunted young deputy sheriff and a notorious old murderer. John Gload (Nolte) is a killer so adept at his job that only now has he been apprehended. Val Millimaki (Teague) is a low man in the Copper County Sheriff’s Department. As Val continues his unlucky streak of finding dead bodies, Sheriff (Murray) puts him on night duty to try and get Gload to reveal his past. Val finds much in common with his prisoner and dangerously seeks counsel from him.
Sales: Concourse Media and CAA Media Finance (domestic), Concourse (international)
Untitled Jason Statham and Baltasar Kormakur film
Dir: Baltasar Kormakur
Cast: Jason Statham.
Plot: Statham will play Mason who lives in isolation in a remote Scottish island. When he rescues a young girl from the ocean in a terrible storm, he sets a chain of events in motion that brings a violent attack to his hideaway, forcing him back into the world to confront the ghosts of his past.
Sales: Black Bear and Range Select
Arco
Dir: Ugo Bienvenu
Cast: Natalie Portman.
Plot: Taking its cue from the fantasy premise that rainbows are time machines, the movie revolves around 10 year old rainbow-child Arco, who lives in the distant future, 2932.
Sales: Gebeka In’l
The Patient
Dir: Mukunda Michael Dewil
Cast: Ryan Phillippe and Kate Beckinsale.
Plot: When The Patient (Phillippe) wakes up in a hospital without any recollection of what happened to him, he is issued a life he doesn’t remember by the inscrutable Dr. Rose (Beckinsale). But soon he comes to suspect that he’s being manipulated in order to protect a powerful politician implicated in a murder.”
Sales: International Film Trust (world)
Mutiny
Dir: Jean-Francois Richet
Cast: Jason Statham.
Plot: In Mutiny, after his billionaire industrialist boss is murdered in front of him, Cole Reed is set up to take the fall for the crime— leaving him on the run as he works to uncover an international conspiracy.
Sales: CAA Media Finance (domestic), The Veterans (international).
The Man with the Miraculous Hands
Dir: Oren Moverman
Cast: Andy Serkis and Woody Harrelson.
Plot: The 1939-set movie tells the true story of Felix Kersten (Harrelson), a renowned, apolitical medical masseuse, who became the personal doctor of the chronically ill Heinrich Himmler (Serkis), Hitler’s second-in-command who was the head of the SS and is regarded as the chief architect of the Holocaust.
Sales: SND (international)
Girl Next Door
Dir: Bruce Goodison
Cast: Bella Ramsey.
Plot: The film is inspired by the true story of a 21 year old suburban mother of two who became radicalised. Lewthwaite (who took the first name Sherafiyah), the widow of a 7/7 London terrorist bomber, is accused of causing the deaths of more than 400 people. She is a fugitive from justice in Kenya, where she is wanted on charges of possession of explosives.
Sales: Celsius Entertainment (world)
Tenzing
Dir: Jennifer Peedom
Cast: Tom Hiddleston and Willem Dafoe.
Plot: The film is inspired by the true story of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and his summit of Mount Everest in 1953 alongside fellow outsider New Zealander Edmund Hillary.
Sales: Rocket Science and Cross City Films (international), UTA Independent Film Group and Cross City Films (U.S.)
Keeper
Dir: Osgood Perkins
Cast: Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland.
Plot: Keeper follows a couple as they escape for a romantic anniversary weekend at a secluded cabin. When Malcolm (Sutherland) suddenly returns to the city, Liz (Maslany) finds herself isolated and in the presence of an unspeakable evil that unveils the cabin’s horrifying secrets.
Sales: Neon (international)
The Queen Of Fashion
Dir: Alex Marx
Cast: Andrea Riseborough.
Plot: The Queen of Fashion details the ups and downs of Blow’s life championing unknown and marginalized fashion figures like Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, and Sophie Dahl, whom she catapulted to success while struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder.
Sales: Rocket Science (international), CAA Media Finance (domestic)
Bear Country
Dir: Derrick Borte
Cast: Russell Crowe.
Plot: Crowe will play ageing but formidable club owner, Manco Kapak who has been robbed by a masked gunman. Now, his aspirations of selling his club and riding off into the sunset alongside his girlfriend appear more distant than ever. Cartel bosses are breathing down his neck and a young upstart has been posing as the new guy in town eager to purchase the club.
Sales: A Higher Standard
I Play Rocky
Dir: Peter Farrelly
Cast: Casting underway
Plot: A struggling actor with a partially paralyzed face and a speech impediment writes a script that a big movie studio wants to buy, but he refuses to sell it unless he gets to play the lead. Turning down an offer of life-changing money, he instead works for pennies to get the movie made with himself in the starring role. The movie becomes the biggest box office hit of 1976, notching 10 Oscar nominations and winning Best Picture. The true story of the making of the iconic movie Rocky.
Sales: CAA Media Finance and FilmNation
47 Meters Down: The Wreck
Dir: Patrick Lussier
Cast: Casting underway
Plot: The story will follow a father who is determined to rebuild his relationship with his daughter as they bond during a scuba diving in beautiful tropical waters while exploring a famous shipwreck. But soon after their descent, their master diver has an accident leaving them alone and unprotected inside the labyrinth of the wreck. As tensions rise and oxygen dwindles, the pair must use their newfound bond to escape the wreck and the relentless barrage of bloodthirsty great white sharks.
Sales: FilmNation
California Schemin
Dir: James McAvoy
Cast: Samuel Bottomley and Séamus McLean Ross
Plot: The film will chart the true story of two Scottish lads from Dundee who conned the international music industry by adopting American accents and pretending to be established Californian rap duo, Silibil N’ Brains.
Sales: Bankside and UTA Independent Film Group
The Carpenter’s Son
Dir: Lotfy Nathan
Cast: Nicolas Cage, FKA twigs, Noah Jupe and Souheila Yacoub
Plot: The Carpenter’s Son tells the dark story of a family hiding out in Roman Egypt. The son, known only as ‘the Boy’, is driven to doubt by another mysterious child and rebels against his guardian, the Carpenter, revealing inherent powers and a fate beyond his comprehension. As he exercises his own power, the Boy and his family become the target of horrors, natural and divine.
Sales: Goodfellas (international), Anonymous Content and WME (North America)
Takes One To Know One
Dir: Nathalie Biancheri
Cast: Olivia Cooke And Jamie Bell
Plot: When Eleanor (Cooke) and Lucas (Bell) meet in Rome, the chemistry is electric. With a shared passion for art, Italy, and each other, it looks like the start of something life-changing. The biggest stumbling block: They are both in relationships with other people.
Sales: Cornerstone has international rights and will co-rep the U.S. with CAA Media Finance.
Megalopolis
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voigt, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne and Kathryn Hunter.
Plot: Adam Driver stars as an idealistic architect attempting to rebuild New York as an American Utopia.
Sales: Goodfellas
A Sudden Case Of Christmas
Dir: Peter Chelsom
Cast: Danny DeVito, Andie MacDowell, Wilmer Valderrama, and Lucy DeVito
Plot: The film follows Lawrence (DeVito), who runs a grand hotel in the mountains of Italy. Every winter, he hosts the extended family for Christmas – but this year, his daughter (Lucy DeVito) and her husband (Valderrama) are bringing their 10-year-old, Claire (Antonella Rose), to visit in August. The young couple comes with shocking news, they are divorcing and tasked Lawrence with being the bearer of bad news to Claire. When Claire realizes her soon-to-be broken family won’t be returning in December, she insists on having one last Christmas with the entire family now in the middle of summer. Her other grandparents (MacDowell and José Zúñiga) are summoned while Claire, in collusion with her grandfather Lawrence, plans activities designed to reunite her parents and bring the whole family back together.
Sales: VMI Worldwide.
The Razor’s Edge
Dir: Demian Lichtenstein
Cast: James Franco and Tommy Lee Jones
Plot: After a mob hitman vows to leave his deadly past behind, he faces an impossible choice when his daughter is kidnapped and the woman he loves becomes a target of the syndicate. He is forced to undertake one final, perilous mission while being pursued by an assassin even more lethal.
Sales: Red Sea Media
Monsanto
Dir: John Lee Hancock
Cast: Glen Powell, Anthony Mackie, and Laura Dern
Plot: Monsanto tells the true story of young, untried attorney Brent Wisner (Powell) who takes on a seemingly insurmountable case against the giant U.S. chemical company Monsanto on behalf of Dewayne “Lee” Johnson (Mackie) who used Monsanto’s best-known product Roundup, a wildly financially successful weed and grass pesticide killer, as part of his job as a high school groundskeeper. During the trial, Dr Melinda Rogers (Dern), the chief toxicologist of the Monsanto Company, testifies with certainty that Roundup is safe.
Sales: Rocket Science (international), CAA Media Finance (domestic)
The Long Walk
Dir: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Under wraps.
Plot: An adaptation of adaption of Stephen King’s The Long Walk. Originally published in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, the plot focuses on a dystopian America that is entertained by the Long Walk – a competition in which 100 teenage boys walk without rest along US Route 1. Each competitor must keep walking faster than four miles per hour – or risk being eliminated.
Sales: Lionsgate
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