Film Festival Question

[ucjrdude902]

Posted: 1/25/13 at 12:16pm

Can someone explain to me how these work? I was watching E! News and Steve Carrell was talking about a film he was in and they discussed the bidding war and how Fox Searchlight won the rights at Sundance.

Do all films go through film festivals? What does it mean they "won" it?

[AEA AGMA SM]

Posted: 1/25/13 at 1:02pm

No, not all films go through festivals. When you hear about a film that is already made going through a bidding war what you are hearing about is an independent film that was made without a major studio's involvement. The bidding wars are when a studio, such as Fox, sees the film, that is already completed, and decides that they want to purchase the rights to distribute that film to the national movie theater chains. Sometimes the buzz will be particularly good around a film and several companies will be interested in it, thus one eventually winning the bidding war.

A major film such as The Avengers never had a bidding war between distributors because it was made by one of the big studios who already had the means to handle their own distribution.