A year after Netflix paid $20 million at Sundance for workplace relationship drama Fair Play, only to watch the prestige title come and go on its platform in October without much of an audience or awards buzz, the streaming service has boldly pulled out its wallet once again at the film festival.

On Monday in Park City, Utah, Netflix paid $17 million for filmmaker Greg Jardin's high-concept horror-comedy It's What's Inside, a movie about a bunch of college friends getting together for a wedding pre-party ... that, of course, has an unintended outcome. 

The film will reportedly receive a theatrical release from Netflix. The Penske showbiz trades reviewed the film here. 

It's the biggest transaction so far at the annual Sundance Film Festival, which runs through Sunday. 

Sundance has been a popular shopping destination for prestige indie titles for decades, but streaming companies have dominated the big transactions there in recent years. This includes Apple's $25 million acquisition of CODA in 2021. That film went on to win three Oscars, including Best Picture. 

As for filmmaker Chloe Domont's Fair Play, it debuted on Netflix back in early October to just 24.2 million hours of streaming and 12.6 million views. The film has generated little in the way of awards-season buzz for Netflix this cycle. 

Netflix decisively signaled Monday that it is far from through with the often pricey prestige indie film business, successfully bidding a widely reported $20 million at the Sundance Film Festival to acquire director workplace relationship drama Fair Play. 

The film, produced by MRC and T-Street, stars Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich as engaged employees of a cutthroat New York hedge fund whose relationship begins to unravel when Dynevor’s Emily receives an unexpected promotion to a level above Ehrenreich's Luke. 

Fair Play was directed by Chloe Domont, a 35-year-old feature-film first-timer whose previous experience included directing episodes of HBO’s Dwayne Johnson series Ballers and Showtime’s Billions. 

Fair Play has a solid 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson noting, "It’s a grim, dynamic thriller, one that sets workplace and home crashing into one another in a small symphony of beautiful disharmony."

The purchase follows an earlier Sundance acquisition by Netflix of XYZ Films' Run Rabbit Run featuring Succession actress Sarah Snook.

As Next TV correspondent David Bloom noted Sunday from Park City, Utah, the buzz at Sundance over the weekend was that the streaming companies — now facing economic headwinds driven by a suddenly streaming-bearish Wall Street — were demurring on expensive acquisitions, such as the $25 million Apple paid for eventual Oscar Best Picture winner CODA in 2021. 

And for its part, Netflix — which broke through with its own Best Picture Oscar for Roma four years ago — hadn't had a huge amount of success this trophy cycle with prestige dramas All Quiet on the Western Front and The Pale Blue Eye ... at least until Tuesday, when Western Front received nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. 

Still, Netflix's bold bid for Fair Play — which reportedly beat out rival bids from Searchlight and half a dozen other aspirants — comes as the streaming giant is spending slightly less for content than it used to, and allocating more of its budget to local-language productions. 

In fact, a Netflix insider conceded to Next TV that this year‘s domestic release slate, announced last week, is notably smaller than 2022's. 

Also last week, Netflix revealed that it spent $16.84 billion for content in 2022, 4.9% less than in 2021, when it spent $17.7 billion on movies and shows. ▪️

PARK CITY, Utah — Ah, Sundance ... It’s back! In person! But with temperatures as low as 7 degrees (that’s Fahrenheit, for our globe-girdling international readers), the extreme cold has become a handy metaphor for the lack of heat in the market for all the indie projects on display, except for a few horror films and music documentaries. 

You can blame that on the Great Streaming Correction that hit media companies last year after Netflix’s disastrous April earnings report. Wall Street suddenly wanted profits, not investments, in streaming. And the competitive heat and underlying calculus to justify splashing cash on random festival darlings seemingly evaporated by the time Sundance returned in person a few days ago to Park City, Utah after two years of virtual perdition. 

Oh, sure, many things are still the same in this year’s sprawling festival. Brands gonna brand. Traffic gonna traffic. And filmmakers of all sorts and nationalities are still insanely excited to have their passion projects get the spotlight and love of a Sundance premiere and press line. 

Everyone is once again swarming the parties, panels, hotel lobbies, marketing activations and Park City’s hideously congested Main Street, which I like to call the world’s steepest parking lot. 

For the filmmakers, many likely also dream of the kind of financial score that Sian Heder managed just two years ago, when Apple TV Plus bought her CODA for $25 million. That price was, by a long shot, a record for the most money ever spent on a Sundance film (Hulu set the previous record of $17 million just a year earlier, for Palm Springs). 

UPDATED: On Monday, selling activity at Sundance suddenly warmed when Netflix reportedly agreed to pay MRC $20 million for relationship drama Fair Play.

Apple’s hefty investment paid off quickly, not only drawing plenty of viewers and critical buzz, but winning three Oscars last March, including Best Picture, as well as deaf actor Troy Kotsur’s ground-breaking supporting actor win.

Another 2021 Sundance opening-night movie, the musical documentary Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), also sold to a streamer, Disney Plus. It, too,  proved a commercial and critical hit, notching an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Don’t count on another CODA-sized score this year, however. All of a sudden, it’s a lot harder for streaming services to justify a big payday for a film that may not draw lots of new subscribers, build buzz for the service as a must-have or keep customers from churning off to the next thing. 

At least that’s the argument in movie wait lines, shuttle bus rides and endless cocktail parties. Others suggest that streaming services may need to stock up on some projects at reasonable prices, in case a feared writer’s strike hits Hollywood later this year. 

But the evidence mounts that it may indeed be a chilly year for deals. 

A Cooler Approach

Streaming’s cooler approach is badly timed for the indie film business, always a parlous proposition but especially now in the streaming chill. 

Theatrical exhibition remains a mess, despite massive hits like Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water. But the other end of the theatrical business — typically occupied by the kinds of films and fans you’d see at Sundance — has been battered. Overall, 2022’s box office was still a third down from pre-pandemic days, most of the impacts hitting mid-sized and smaller critic-driven prestige projects.

Streaming services had filled a part of that gap, buying films that could appeal to a specific niche of their audiences, while possibly generating some awards buzz at year end. But if streaming services aren’t buying, and theatrical exhibition remains a mess, where will these projects get seen, and how will they get financed? 

The purchases at Sundance 2023 so far have been modest at best. Netflix announced on the festival’s first day that it had bought Run Rabbit Run, an Australian horror film starring Sara Snook (Succession). Netflix already has a watch reminder page on its site for the movie, though no trailer, images or release date. 

Amazon Prime Video picked up another horror film, In My Mother’s Skin, out of the Philippines, of all places. And there have been a few other acquisitions: Magnolia bought a terrific documentary about rock pioneer Little Richard; Onyx Collective bought several projects to expand its slate for Hulu, including a documentary about Sly Stone.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Hollywood, Netflix “blew the doors off” its quarterly earnings announcement last week, beating guidance on revenue and subscribers, adding nearly 7.7 million paid members. 

Co-CEO Reed Hastings decided it was the perfect time to announce he’ll be leaving the company he founded, shifting to executive chairman so heir apparent Greg Peters can slide into the operational side of the company’s shared CEO seat. 

Amid all that, Netflix also released its 2023 programming slate, which was markedly slimmer than last year’s.

The slimmed-down slate also shows the company’s continued focus on making more shows for local markets around the world, instead of big Hollywood productions that get shipped everywhere else. 

As if to emphasize that shifting focus, the company said last week it would end one of its bigger hits of recent years, Cobra Kai, after the show’s sixth season. And the company’s hefty investments in awards contenders has been considerably muted this Oscar season, unlike past years that resulted in Oscar winners such as Roma and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. 

It’s starting to feel like a paradigm shift has truly taken hold across streaming, manifesting at Sundance and far beyond. 

It’s certainly possible in coming days that Netflix and other streaming service programmers will dive back into Sundance’s offerings and scoop up more shows this year as more films hold their premieres over the next few days. Or maybe, like so many of us trudging through the snow and wind in Park City, they’ll just chill. 

Showtime Documentary Films said it has acquired worldwide rights to documentary feature Cusp.

The documentary, which debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and is produced by Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt, follows three, wild-spirited teenage girls as they live out a fever-dream summer, when the strictures of adolescence clash with the growing desire for personal agency, said network officials. Showtime will release the film theatrically before airing it on the network later this year.

“We are thrilled to be working with Parker and Isabel, who, much like their subjects, are on their own cusp with this emotional and striking first feature,” Showtime executive vice president of nonfiction programming Vinnie Malhotra said in a statement. “The raw intimacy they capture, and the stories they draw from their subjects, are incredible when you consider where they are in their careers.”

Apple wowed a subdued Sundance acquisition market over the weekend, dropping a record $25 million to purchase feel-good family drama CODA. Along the way, the owner of the deepest pockets in tech again demonstrated it is increasingly willing to spend what it takes to make a dent in the intensely competitive streaming market. 

CODA premiered on the film festival’s opening night Thursday, the only feature alongside two documentaries accorded the indie showcase’s biggest spotlight.  The film definitely deserved the limelight, as one of this year’s most accessible and accomplished entries. 

Directed by Sian Heder and based on a French film called La Famille Belier, CODA stars Emilia Jones as Ruby, the only hearing-abled member of her tight-knit family of fishers in Gloucester, Mass. Among the fine cast of deaf actors is Oscar winner Marlee Matlin, who plays Ruby’s mother. Ruby is a high school senior, pinched between her family’s needs in navigating the fishing business, pursuing a new interest in music school to develop her fine singing voice, and perhaps a touch of romance. 

This year’s virtualized festival has none of its traditional in-person buzz builders, but social-media response after the premiere was immediate, loud and approving. And it wasn’t just the Twitterati applauding. Variety chief film critic Owen Glieberman, in his rhapsodic review, called CODA a “tender, lively, funny and beautifully stirring drama.” 

The film is, as Glieberman noted, a well-crafted crowd pleaser, with story arcs of a young woman overcoming adversity to realize her dream, and a loving family working together and learning to let that young woman grow and go while taking more control over their own lives. There’s even a community organizer component, as Ruby’s family leads an effort to create a cooperative with other struggling fishers. 

“In many ways, it’s a highly conventional film, with tailored story arcs that crest and resolve just so, and emotional peaks and valleys that touch big fat rounded chords of inspiration,” Glieberman wrote. 

You’d be right to think that sounds like a film custom-crafted for the sensibility that Apple executives from Tim Cook on down have tried to inculcate on Apple TV Plus, as well as across much of their public messaging that isn’t just a product pitch. 

Cook’s directives for uplifting messages and no-go areas have caused some conflicts with creators, but it also has built the outlines of a programming sensibility for TV+, important for differentiating in a time when only Disney+ can be said to have coherent brand among the big streamers. 

Regardless, the film’s charms, and online/critical response to it, were enough to set off a bidding war among several potential acquirers before Apple emerged victorious over the weekend. The $25 million price was nearly 50% higher than the previous record, set in 2020 when Hulu paid $17.5 million (plus 69 more cents to edge out the previous record) for Pete Davidson’s comedy Palm Springs. 

CODA is a very different film from Palm Springs, the latter an adult comedic cross of Groundhog Day and The Hangover that debuted on Hulu last summer.

No doubt, CODA has its adult-skewing moments, mostly with more blunt, foul and funny language (often in quite evocative sign language) than any Disney film ever. These are people working in the hard-scrabble business of fishing. How Apple TV Plus navigates that when the film comes to the service will be interesting to watch. 

But the bigger question will be what this latest cash splash communicates to Apple’s competitors. Is Apple staking out thematic territory that it plans to own, whatever the price? Will other companies have to begin imposing their own explicit sensibility on their offerings, to differentiate and appeal to market segments? Do they need to further increase programming spends to keep up, or should they try to spend smarter with more targeted deals? 

Though Apple TV Plus was the first of the new group of subscription streaming services to launch, 15 months ago today, Apple has remained a lesser player, so much so that it just further extended free subscription credits to current users through June. That says it understands how much value Apple TV Plus is currently providing to viewers. 

And Apple had little to say about TV Plus during last week’s analyst call around its humongous first quarter earnings, which topped $111 billion. The company set records in about 15 different categories, including for its Services segment, which includes Apple TV Plus and other subscriptions, such as Apple Music, iCloud and Apple Care. 

Services revenue for the quarter reached nearly $16 billion, which, it must be emphasized, represents on an annualized basis more revenue than the combined entire market capitalizations of ViacomCBS, Fox, and AMC (though significant parts of VIAC and Fox are owned by their respective controlling families). 

For those already dismayed by Apple’s deep pockets, the company signaled today it’s going to stuff them even more for the short term, filing a preliminary prospectus with the SEC to issue bonds in a six-tranche deal. 

The size of the issue wasn’t specified, but dollar-denominated bonds would be offered in expiration dates between five and 40 years. Apple shares are up 73% in the past year, valuing the company at $2.26 trillion.

Also tucked into Apple’s continually astonishing earnings, in what was probably the greatest quarter in the history of capitalism: it still has $196 billion in cash and marketable securities. 

For years, the company has said it would spend down that gigantic treasure chest, a commitment CFO Luca Maestri reiterated last week, mentioning $30 billion in recent share buybacks. But, in truth, the company keeps making so much money that vast wallet is pretty much unchanged in girth. 

Perhaps the increasingly public conversations about a possible Apple Car, or Apple VR and AR headsets, will provide an opportunity for Apple to spend down its cash. In the meantime, Apple once again is demonstrating a willingness to spend more than anyone in streaming for properties that fit its vision, and the new Apple One services bundles. 

Last summer, just before the Cannes Film Festival, Apple swooped in with a record $120 million deal for Civil War-era “slave thriller” Emancipation, starring Will Smith and directed by veteran action director Antoine Fuqua. 

And then there was the $70 million pickup from Sony of Tom Hanks’ WWII naval thriller Greyhound. Though Apple didn’t release viewership numbers, third-party reports suggest Greyhound’s debut on July 4 weekend helped drive substantially higher Apple TV Plus signups.

CODA likely won’t do that, given that Emilia Jones, for all her supremely evident talents, isn’t Tom Hanks, and neither is Marlee Matlin, despite that Oscar on her shelf. But it’s not hard to see the film become a breakout hit with young audiences who may celebrate its themes and stars online.  

The size of the deal suggests that Apple is paying attention to TV Plus, even if the company speaks little about it to investors. So too does Apple’s increasingly frequent advertising about Apple TV Plus programming. 

The big question remains whether Apple will really open the wallet? 

To fully match up against its direct competitors, it still needs library of older films and TV shows. Investors at MGM, Lionsgate, AMC, and maybe even ViacomCBS and Sony, are sure hoping Apple is feeling even more acquisitive. 

That may not happen. Apple is playing a different game than HBO Max, Peacock, AMC Plus, Netflix, or Hulu. 

They’re all trying to attract and keep subscribers to their service. Apple is using TV+ to keep happy the owners of its 1.6 billion connected devices. Will its hardware-selling and entertainment-buying prerogatives swamp the Hollywood studios and their newly launched services?

Amazon Studios has acquired the Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip to stream to Amazon Prime Video subscribers in May.

Amazon said will stream the six-part documentary, from director Amir Bar-Lev and executive-produced by Martin Scorsese, which probes the 30-year career of the legendary rock band, on May 26 in the United States and United Kingdom with more territories to be announced. The four-hour doc will premiere at Sundance Film Festival, according to the service.

“The story of the Grateful Dead is that of music and culture of the 20th Century,” Joe Lewis, Head of Comedy and Drama, Amazon Studios, said in a release. “Told with vast scope and an unprecedented cast of real life characters, Amir has taken advantage of this larger than life canvas to make an era-defining musical portrait that we can’t wait to bring to audiences everywhere.”