At Sundance Film Festival, streaming services compete to buy indie films, documentaries and series

Fears of a soft market at the film festival fade as streaming giants pay record price for an independent film amid rising competition to acquire content

Documentaries are hot items, with services such as Netflix and Hulu giving them access to a wide audience for the first time

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A still from Hulu’s Hillary, a four-part series about Hillary Clinton. Business is booming at Sundance film festival.

Published: 12:00pm, 30 Jan 2020Updated: 12:00pm, 30 Jan 2020

At Sundance, the film festival in the American state of Utah known for launching the careers of filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, corporations are stealing the show this year.

Among the hot tickets were a Netflix documentary about pop star Taylor Swift and a four-part Hulu series about Hillary Clinton. Many other hotly anticipated pictures were snapped up by streaming services before they were submitted to Sundance or just before the festival started.

Hulu and indie distributor Neon said they made the most expensive film purchase in Sundance history. The pair paid US$17.5 million and 69 cents for Palm Springs, about a couple who wreak havoc at a wedding. That edged out the record set in 2016 by The Birth of a Nation by less than US$1.

Viewers are continuing to migrate away from linear TV and cinemas, opting instead to enjoy new shows and movies when they choose and in the privacy of their homes.

Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti in a still from Palm Springs (2020).

The frenzy has given documentaries new-found cachet. “Documentaries have never really had distribution before – you’d have to go to a speciality movie theatre,” says Bryn Mooser, chief executive of the production company XTR and co-producer of Mucho Mucho Amor, a film bought by Netflix. “Now when you turn on Netflix or Hulu, a documentary is literally on the tile next to Avengers.”