FilmNation Entertainment founder and CEO Glen Basner says the independent film business is still leaning too heavily on an old packaging formula at a moment when buyers, financiers and distributors are trying to manage risk across a shifting global marketplace.
Speaking on a TIFF: The Market panel on Saturday, Basner identified what he sees as a central problem in the current indie distribution landscape: the industry’s continued reliance on a traditional equation in which a particular star, director and set of package elements are expected to translate into a predictable value.
That approach, he argued, has pushed buyers toward projects they can sell into pay TV giants and streaming companies in their own territories as a way of containing risk. But Basner warned that the result may not be serving theatrical cinema.
“The only problem is we’re building movies for the streaming companies, and it may work great on the streamers, but it’s not the same as building a theatrical proposition,” Basner said.
Basner’s comments framed a broader discussion about how indie films are financed, packaged and sold at a time when the old assumptions around pre-sales and territorial value have become less reliable.
A call for broader thinking around film packages
Basner urged buyers and financiers to think more expansively about what makes an independent film viable. Rather than treating a recognizable actor as the deciding factor in a project’s value, he said the goal should be to shape a film that can reach audiences in theaters and continue to perform across other platforms.
For IP holders, Basner said the challenge is to develop material for a fast-changing global market in a way that gives a project life beyond a single format. That can include thinking about whether a film might also work as a series and how it can travel across platforms and international markets for full exploitation.
Basner made clear that a major actor can still be valuable to a package. But he questioned whether a name alone is enough to make a film work.
“Our approach to packaging is we’re trying to evolve to say how can we make the best possible film so it can compel people in an undeniable way to see it in a movie theater. And it they do go see it, it’s going to work in home video, it’s going to work on pay, it’s going to work on free television,” Basner said.
His comments point to a tension now facing indie film sellers: a package may be attractive to streamers or pay TV partners, but that does not automatically make it a strong theatrical proposition. Basner’s argument was not that stars or familiar packaging elements no longer matter, but that they cannot be the whole strategy.
CAA’s Roeg Sutherland says the financing puzzle has changed
Roeg Sutherland, co-head of the media finance department and co-head of the International Film Group at CAA, echoed the need for a new approach during The Global Sales Playbook panel at TIFF. He said film buyers now need stronger connections to global markets and new financing strategies to complete budgets.
“There’s a disconnect from what we feel is working in North America and what actually works internationally, and specifically for the pay TV deals,” Sutherland said.
Sutherland said the packaging process begins well before casting. In his view, it starts with an original script or a book for adaptation, and with at least a producer attached.
He also described how dramatically the pre-sales environment has shifted. Sutherland said the period when a company could go to Toronto, Berlin or Cannes and pre-sell most of an independent movie’s budget is over.
“You’re lucky if you can go and pre-sell four or five major territories and then you still have to figure out how to make the puzzle work,” he said.
That puzzle, Sutherland suggested, remains an unstable one. He said sales agents are still trying to hold together complicated layers of financing, comparing the work to assembling Lego pieces all day long in an effort “to build up a universe that collapses on us all the time, just as it does for everybody else.”
Theaters, concert films and cautious optimism
Sutherland also addressed the recent interest from theatrical exhibitors in entering the distribution business. He welcomed the effort but noted that the model has shown results with concert films for Taylor Swift and Beyonce, while its application to major movies remains unproven.
“We haven’t seen it work really well with a major movie. But we applaud any attempt to get more content into movie theaters,” Sutherland said.
Basner, meanwhile, sounded optimistic about theatrical box office through the end of 2026 and into next year. While he acknowledged industry fears around AI and shrinking theatrical windows, he said the festival calendar has given him reason to believe audiences still have a strong appetite for distinctive films.
“We’re seeing a lot of fear — AI is coming, and theatrical windows are shortening. But I look around this calendar year, and I see all the film premiering at festivals like TIFF, and I’m going to have a really busy next four months sitting in a movie theater watching great movies,” Basner said.
He added: “Filmmakers are finding a way not just to get their films made, but to tell their stories from their own unique perspective and audiences are responding.”
For Basner and Sutherland, the message from TIFF was clear: the indie film market is not standing still. The challenge now is to build movies that can justify their place in theaters while still making sense across home video, pay TV, free television, streamers and international markets.