Documentary Filmmakers Lament Hollywood Cutbacks and Deal Scarcity: ‘Our Ecosystem Is in the Midst of a Collapse’
variety.comAddie Morfoot Contributor Documentary filmmaking has never been a profession one enters into to get rich — though for a brief period it seemed possible.
Cable expanded documentary’s reach to wider audiences in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and films like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “March of the Penguins,” and “An Inconvenient Truth” became legitimate box-office breakthroughs, but nonfiction features on the whole remained something of a stepchild within the larger Hollywood ecosystem until 2017, when Netflix acquired Brian Fogel’s “Icarus” for $5 million.
At the time, the deal was one of the biggest ever for a non-fiction film. And it was followed by even bigger deals: In 2019 Netflix shelled out $10 million for Rachel Lears’ “Knock Down the House.” The following year Apple TV+ and A24 partnered to buy Jesse Moss’ “Boys State” for $10 million, and in 2021 Searchlight and Hulu bought Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s “Summer of Soul” for $12 million.
On the surface it seemed like people, even first time filmmakers like Fogel and Thompson, could actually get rich making nonfiction films, and that Hollywood, by paying seven figures, valued the form.
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