Topline:
This year’s Sundance Film Festival saw a spate of seven and eight-figure documentary sales, which was welcome news to a beleaguered industry, but that doesn’t necessarily mean an end to a doc market that has lurched from boom to bust in recent years.
The details: In recent years the streamers seem to be all about documentary biopics that center on iconic sports and pop culture figures — Arnold, Sly, Val! — and yet they have cooled on the more sophisticated stories that fueled the documentary boom that started in 2012 and had everyone from Will Smith to the Duplass Brothers jumping into the space.
The background: The 51% tumbling of Netflix’s stock in 2022 is widely considered the end of the documentary boom and it triggered a contraction and widespread layoffs in the documentary space.
As the industry consolidated key executives either retired or were let go which caused further concern among documentary filmmakers. All of a sudden, the industry’s focus started narrowing and companies were privileging more celebrity-driven bio docs because they are seen as less-risky bets. But that shift has the mission-driven community of documentary filmmakers who see themselves not unlike journalists with cameras deeply worried about the future of their industry.
What’s next: Hollywood’s pivot to streaming undoubtedly has been a boon to the doc world, but much of the industry is eager to get back to a time when there was a more diverse slate of films. Whether that’s a creative issue or a business one is the question on everyone’s mind.
For more…read the story on The Ankler.
