Why you should probably be paying more attention to Sundance/ Sundance today, your TV tomorrow

More than 100,000 people converged on Park City, Utah, last week for the annual Sundance Film Festival. And while the temps may not reach above 32°F, the dealmaking at the ten-day-long event is heating up like a player in the classic video game NBA Jam.

⛰🎥 Why it matters: What happens at today’s Sundance has a way of becoming tomorrow’s mainstream – kind of like a crystal ball that provides glimpses of the people and movies that will shape Hollywood over the next few years. Filmmakers get a chance to showcase their work, and studios come with blank checks aplenty.

Case in point: last year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, CODA, premiered at 2021’s Sundance and was bought during the festival by Apple for $25 million. And that’s just one example in a looooong line.

⬅️📼 Sundance, a history… The festival, which was founded by actor and filmmaker Robert Redford, debuted in 1985. And four years later, it launched the modern independent film movement as we know it – all thanks to an unknown filmmaker named Steven Soderbergh.

At 1989’s festival, Soderbergh – who later helmed the Ocean's Eleven and Magic Mike franchises – unveiled his first feature film, sex, lies, and videotape. It would go on to become one of the most successful indie films released to that point, putting Sundance on the map as a hotbed of talent waiting to become household names.

We’re talking:

• Quentin Tarantino (all the movies)
• Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Boyhood)
• The Coen brothers (also all the movies)
• Rian Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Knives Out)
• Ava DuVernay (Selma)
• Damien Chazelle (Whiplash*, La La Land),
• Kevin Smith (Clerks*, Jay & Silent Bob),
• Wes Anderson (another one who made all the movies)
• Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia)

And the festival isn’t just a launching pad for filmmakers. Some of the most iconic films of the past few decades have debuted at Sundance, including Napoleon Dynamite, Little Miss Sunshine, Get Out, and The Blair Witch Project (which made $250+ million on a $60,000 production budget, and launched with a rather ingenious marketing campaign).

💰Zoom in: The two biggest deals announced at Sundance so far this year involve Netflix and Apple, who each paid $20 million to buy Fair Play and Flora and Son, respectively. And arthouse distributor A24 is reportedly close to finalizing a deal in the high seven-figures for horror film Talk to Me.