Has Sundance Become a Film Festival for Streaming Services?

variety.com:

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterIn another era, traditional movie studios would have exhaustively battled to buy a Sundance Film Festival crowd-pleaser like “Cha Cha Real Smooth” in the hopes of turning critical raves into the next theatrical hit.“Cha Cha Real Smooth,” writer-director Cooper Raiff’s charming story about a budding friendship between an aimless college grad and a young mother, seemed tailor-made to charm the snow boots off Sundance buyers — and it did.

Apple TV Plus outbid competitors and bought the movie for $15 million, the biggest sale at this year’s festival. But unlike perennial Sundance favorite “Little Miss Sunshine,” Kumail Nanjiani’s unconventional rom-com “The Big Sick,” the Mister Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and other indie darlings that came before it, “Cha Cha Real Smooth” wasn’t sold to a conventional movie studio and therefore won’t require box office dollars to justify its price tag.

If the film plays in theaters at all, Apple likely will not even report ticket sales. The reality that Sundance has become a playground for streamers, many of whom have content libraries to fill and cash to burn, isn’t exactly new.

But the trend has become increasingly noticeable during the pandemic, which shook up the movie theater business and perhaps permanently shifted audience’s already changing tastes.