No one is coming to save you...

I had over 7,000 pitches come to me in 2025, and every single one landed on the same assumption that a festival premiere would convert into a major acquisition.

After enough repetitions, follow-up questions stopped adding value, since the plan rarely extended beyond finishing the film, submitting to Sundance, SXSW, Cannes, or Tribeca, and waiting for a buyer to appear.

Sundance 2026 is now in its final days, with the Park City run concluded, and the full lineup totaled 97 projects, made up of 90 features and 7 episodic works:

• 97 projects in the lineup.

• 90 features.

• 7 episodic works.

• 3 publicly announced acquisitions so far.

• Roughly a dozen titles that arrived with distribution already secured months earlier.

• Most of the slate returning home without a transaction attached to the festival run.

Public reporting has identified 3 announced acquisitions so far, with buyers already engaged prior to premieres, while roughly a dozen additional titles arrived with distribution already secured months earlier, leaving most of the slate returning home without a transaction attached to the festival run.

Robert Redford died in September 2025, which made this the first Sundance held after his death, and it also marked the last Utah edition before the festival relocates to Boulder beginning in 2027, a transition that did not change the market reality sitting underneath the tributes and commemorations.

During the month of January 2026, the entertainment press framed early box office headlines as a recovery signal, even though the top-grossing titles were largely December 2025 releases carrying over into the new year, including Avatar: Fire and Ash, Zootopia 2, The Housemaid, Marty Supreme, and SpongeBob, which meant the “January” story was substantially powered by December 2025’s calendar positioning.

The actual January 2026 releases leaned heavily on extensions of existing IP and mid-tier commercial programming, with limited evidence that the broader market had widened for new entrants:

• December holdovers driving January framing.

• New January releases offering minimal expansion signals.

• Sequels and familiar brands functioning as the default release posture.

Greenland 2: Migration reportedly carried a $90M production cost and has grossed under $21M worldwide to date, which places it in territory where the theatrical run does not function as a meaningful recovery mechanism.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple reportedly carried a $63M production cost and opened to about $15M domestic over a 4-day holiday frame, landing behind Avatar: Fire and Ash in its 5th week, while public commentary around break-even expectations has centered around roughly $150M, and continuation decisions appear insulated from immediate box office signal.

Primate, positioned as a killer chimp release, is the rare January title that appears set up for profitability on its current trajectory, with a reported $21M budget and projections around $45M worldwide. The lesson the industry will take from this is make more killer animal movies. They will learn nothing else.

Independent releases offered visibility without converting into meaningful revenue:

• Dead Man’s Wire reaching roughly $1.2M domestic and about $2.1M worldwide so far.

• We Bury the Dead reaching about $3.7M worldwide.

• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring re-release posting about $3.94M domestic.

Dead Man’s Wire, tied to Gus Van Sant and positioned as the inaugural release from Row K Entertainment, has reached roughly $1.2M domestic and about $2.1M worldwide so far, and should be noted this film has 104 Producers listed on it’s IMDb page and a $15M budget! Absurd!

We Bury the Dead, a Daisy Ridley zombie film acquired by Vertical out of SXSW, has reached about $3.7M worldwide, and being framed as a record “opening” within that label category communicates category compression rather than market expansion.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, now 25 years old, outgrossed both during its re-release, posting about $3.94M domestic, which underscores where durable demand is still concentrating.

Limited releases in the arthouse lane posted totals that demonstrate how narrow the theatrical channel has become even for films that secured bookings:

• Magellan around $79,084

• Obex around $32,452

• Young Mothers around $11,029

The Invite, directed by and starring Olivia Wilde, sold to A24 for a figure reported to be north of $12M after a short bidding window, and the package included Wilde alongside Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz, with Annapurna producing and a reported $12M budget in place before the first public screening.

Leviticus, described as a queer coming-of-age horror film, sold to NEON for a 7-figure price, and it sits alongside the other announced acquisitions as evidence that transactions are happening, while the volume remains limited relative to the size of the slate.

Within Sundance itself, the acquisition narrative centers on packaged projects that were already positioned for transactions, rather than discovery-driven outcomes created by festival audience response:

• The Invite sold to A24 for a figure reported to be north of $12M.

• Leviticus sold to NEON for a 7-figure price.

• 65% of the lineup listed as seeking distribution.

• About 14 titles distributed or publicly tied to announced deals.

• More than 80 returning without distribution as a result of the festival cycle.

A significant portion of the lineup was publicly listed as “seeking distribution,” and using the 97-project total against the roughly 14 titles that were already distributed or publicly tied to announced deals still leaves more than 80 projects returning without distribution as a result of the festival cycle.

Those films still carry real financial exposure, deferred compensation arrangements, and multi-year time commitments from the people who made them, while a premiere reaction, even when positive, is not functioning as a substitute for a distribution agreement.

The prevailing lesson being taught to new filmmakers has not adjusted to this reality, since the guidance still points toward finishing a film first and determining how it will reach viewers later, even though the data from recent years shows that sequence consistently leaves projects stranded.

Graduating classes will still complete thesis films this spring, submit them to festivals over the summer, and spend the following year discovering that acceptance does not imply demand, and that applause does not imply distribution.

Some will adapt after encountering that wall, while others will step away entirely, carrying finished work that never finds a meaningful audience.

What has disappeared is the assumption that a single public moment can retroactively solve distribution and repayment questions that were left unanswered during development.

Projects that do reach viewers in the coming year are far more likely to have addressed those questions early, by identifying release paths, territorial demand, and revenue sequencing before production began, rather than outsourcing those decisions to a festival premiere.

This shift mirrors changes already absorbed by other project-based fields that rely on outside funding and multi-party coordination.

When real estate developments stall, it is rarely because the building is attractive, and when startups fail to raise, it is rarely because the product lacks interest, since in both cases the missing element is usually a coherent path from participation to repayment that survives basic review.

Film has resisted internalizing that lesson longer than most sectors, largely because tradition and mythology have filled the gaps left by changing market behavior.

The festival-to-acquisition pathway functioned when buyer volume was higher, release slates were thinner, and the number of competing titles was lower, but the conditions that supported that pathway no longer exist at scale.

By 2025, the mismatch was visible, and by Sundance 2026, it was measurable.

The remaining opportunity sits with projects that treat release planning as an integral part of development rather than a postscript, and that approach does not depend on pedigree, personal access, or luck, but on early alignment between cost, reach, and realistic demand.

For anyone working inside that reality, the work begins long before a premiere date appears on a calendar, and it continues well after the applause fades, because distribution, repayment, and audience access are processes that have to be built deliberately.

As consolidation continues, the available windows for unsold projects narrow, not because audiences disappeared, but because the pathways between finished work and paid reach have been reduced to a small number of controlled channels.

Consolidation in the buyer landscape further reduces the number of realistic landing spots, and Netflix’s agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s Warner Bros. business in an $82.7B enterprise-value transaction is consistent with a direction of travel in which buyers get larger, fewer, and more selective.

Paths that remain workable include territory-by-territory sales at established markets, hybrid release planning that aligns costs with realistic revenue bands, deal documents that define payment priority and timing, direct-to-consumer distribution plans built on defensible demand estimates, and legally required disclosures that reduce downstream conflict and prevent investors from being surprised by basic terms after money has moved:

• Territory-by-territory sales at established markets.

• Hybrid releases aligned to realistic revenue bands.

• Deal documents defining payment priority and timing.

• Direct-to-consumer distribution grounded in defensible demand estimates.

• Legally required disclosures that reduce downstream conflict.

This pattern is not unique to film, since any project that requires outside funding faces the same friction when the plan relies on gatekeepers instead of a complete package that can survive diligence and operate without single-point dependency on one event.

That is the environment filmmakers are operating in now, whether they acknowledge it or not, and ignoring it has stopped being neutral.

The projects that adjust will continue moving, and the ones that do not will accumulate alongside the growing inventory of completed films that premiered to strong reactions and then quietly disappeared.

Minimum requirements before anyone spends another dollar:

• A release path that exists on paper before production, including who is buying, where, and under what conditions

• A realistic revenue model by channel, with assumptions stated plainly and defensibly

• A distribution budget that is separate from production, with specific line items and timing

• A recoupment sequence that is internally consistent, with definitions for priority, timing, fees, and reporting

• Chain-of-title confirmation, including life rights where applicable, music rights, and clearance exposure

• A delivery list aligned to actual buyer requirements, not generic checklists

• A sales strategy for territories and platforms, including which markets matter for the genre and why

• A data room that is complete before outreach begins, not assembled during conversations

• Signed agreements that eliminate ambiguity around credits, ownership, approvals, and payment obligations

• A hard stop rule for projects that cannot meet these requirements without turning into a multi-year rescue operation