Focus Features’ Sundance-premiering Polite Society opens on 927 screens, the feature debut of writer/director Nida Manzoor, creator of We Are Lady Parts, the Peacock comedy about the eponymous Brit…
, the annual exhibitor conference. Focus chair Peter Kujawksi called the specialty audience passionate and the market a launching pad for exceptional talent and “unique and elevated stories.” No disagreement there. He also said the specialty business has “recovered better and faster’’ out of Covid than the overall box office. Indie distributors in Las Vegas were considerably less sanguine about that.
The prevailing narrative in fact is that the opposite is true. A host of reasons, depending on who’s talking, include too much or not enough product; difficulty getting on and staying on screens; limited marketing budgets and challenges flagging films to audiences; arthouse closures; theaters in need of upgrades; and moviegoers who are just much pickier about what they’ll go out to see given streaming options, exacerbated in some cases by short theatrical windows.
Outgoing NATO chief John Fithian, and the org’s incoming head Michael O’Leary, stressed the importance of raising the heat around seeing “smaller films.” “It’s partly a marketplace decision,” Fithian said. How you “let people know those movies are available” and how do you prove to theaters that there’s a market for them?” Are some kind of partnerships possible?
Everybody has the desire to see indies get traction, O’Leary said, its’ just not clear “how best we can do that.” A risk is a negative cycle, said one indie distributor in Vegas — the longer specialty films are seen as tough sells, the harder it is to get them on screens and so on. We’ll see how things stand at CinemaCon 2023. Meanwhile, the films will keep coming.opens day and date in the U.K, with Universal Pictures International.Produced byTim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Olivier Kaempfer, John Pocock. Starring Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya, Nimra Bucha, Akshay Khanna, Seraphina Beh, Ella Bruccoleri.
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