Christine Vachon And John Sloss Talk Streamers & The Future Of Theatrical Distribution — San Sebastian

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Industry stalwarts John Sloss of Cinetic Media and Killer Films’ Christine Vachon offered a dynamic and inventive survey of contemporary film production and financing during the closing keynote of San Sebastian’s Creators Investors’ Conference Tuesday.At the start of the session, the pair discussed their personal experiences of navigating the US independent scene in 2022, during which Vachon said she continues to see a dramatic drop in the value of her films on the international market.“We’ve taken things to market that feel extremely undervalued,” she said. “What happens more these days is that we take something out and we’re a little shocked that the market is like ‘Okay, we like it.

But we like it for about two-thirds of what you actually need to get it made.’”Vachon said this downward trend directly affects her work with cast and crew members who she said have yet to grasp the scale of change in the way films are now financed.“There’s a big learning curve right now, which is that the cast and their representation have not caught up to the fact that the business has changed so radically,” she said.“I think that a lot of talent doesn’t realize that those backends don’t really exist anymore, and these above-the-line scenarios where the actor was paid some extraordinary amount of money, and the below-the-line was at a minimum, just don’t make any economic sense anymore because you can’t really make anything good.”Sloss added that this trend is exacerbated by streaming services that are often willing to pay much higher fees for films.“You have streamers paying $150 million for a $50 million film,” he said.However, Sloss later added that the deep pockets of streamers aren’t entirely negative and could potentially provide