Will The Coming Mergers Impact Sundance?

With the interesting developments around bids for Warner Bros. Discovery, it’s looking like a complicated festival season. But what will these major shifts among the traditional Hollywood studios mean for the coming film festival season? Brandon Blake, review here entertainment attorney Los Angeles USA with Blake & Wang P.A., offers his thoughts on these changes.


                                            Brandon Blake

 Upcoming Lineups, Looming Chaos

Just ahead of Sundance releasing its 2026 plans, which will be its last year in Park City, we have a very unusual M&A landscape, where a somewhat hostile set of dueling bids has eclipsed the fact that Warner Bros. is heading for new ownership entirely.

Warner Bros. has not been a major festival name for some time now. But it’s a chaotic merger (and that’s being kind), and the likelihood of escaping its impact is low, especially on the mood and market.

If the traditional studio system is on the outs, as it seems to be, that clears up a lot of space for indie producers and companies. And the new distribution companies we saw pop up at Sundance and throughout the festival circuit this year. 

New Players, New Game

Many of these distributors are using a new rulebook, too, with grassroots marketing and audience development now the go-tos. Fewer buyers and slower decisions may come. But they can be planned for, and bring opportunity with them.

In the end, this may be the merger that breaks the current Hollywood model. But Hollywood has always been good at making changes, especially in technology, work for it.

For indie film producers hoping to nail the festival circuit this year, they may see some merger-minded hesitation, but that is just proof that what once worked no longer does. And few are as good at turning change into results as the indie market.        

                                                           

                                               

           

           

 

 

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