Indie Films Are Staging a Box Office Comeback. How Will That Affect the Toronto Film Festival?
variety.comBrent Lang Executive Editor Over the past few months, a twisted killer, a nonagenarian avenger and a talk show host with a deadly interest in the occult have reinvigorated an indie film business that had been in a prolonged slump.
The success of movies like “Longlegs,” “Thelma” and “Late Night With the Devil” have helped a sector of the entertainment industry — crushed by COVID, strikes and streaming — mount a box office comeback.
And while it’s a long way from the arthouse heyday of the 1990s and early aughts, the turnaround is impressive. “We’ve had some of our biggest hits to date,” says Elissa Federoff, distribution chief at Neon, the studio behind the horror thriller “Long- legs.” “And that’s because we’ve taken bigger bets on bigger-budgeted films that have the potential to reach a much wider audience.” Glen Basner, CEO of FilmNation, agrees that the picture has grown brighter, particularly when it comes to making new movies. “It feels like we’ve turned a corner,” he says. “Filming is ramping up again.
There isn’t the same backlog of projects that needed to shoot all at once when the strike ended.” As the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off this month, executives like Federoff and Basner will touch down in Canada with renewed optimism.
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