Top Hollywood Sales Agent Reveals Biggest Indie Film Challenge: “We’re Building Movies for Streaming Companies”

FilmNation head Glen Basner argues the biggest challenge from the indie film distribution space these days is a too traditional approach to packaging — this name actor means this much money and this director and it has to have X, Y and Z to make sense.

And that has film buyers looking to sell titles to pay TV giants and streamers in their own market to manage overall risk. “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,” the FilmNation Entertainment founder and CEO told a TIFF: The Market panel on Saturday.

Basner urged film buyers and financiers to take a more holistic approach to packaging a movie. For IP holders, the challenge in a fast-evolving global market is to develop a film that might work as a series and has a life across a range of platforms and in global markets for full exploitation.

For Basner, a big name actor attached to a film package is always welcome, but it may not be the secret sauce required for success with a particular indie film project. “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 insisted.

Roeg Sutherland, co-head of the media finance department and co-head of the International Film Group at CAA, agreed film buyers in a fast-changing indie film space need a bridge to global markets and new financing strategies to fill out 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 told The Global Sales Playbook panel at TIFF. He added packaging a film starts well before casting, to an original script or a book for adaptation, and at least with a producer attached.

Sutherland said the years of being able to go to Toronto, Berlin or Cannes and mostly pre-sale an indie movie up to 80 percent of a budget are long gone. “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.

And that remains hard work. Sutherland said sales agents continue to play Lego all day long and try to keep a patchwork of financing together “to build up a universe that collapses on us all the time, just as it does for everybody else.”

Sutherland also welcomed theatrical exhibitors getting into the movie distribution business, but he cautioned that model had worked with concert films for Taylor Swift and Beyonce. “We haven’t seen it work really well with a major movie. But we applaud any attempt to get more content into movie theaters,” he argued.

And Basner was bullish on theatrical box office to the end of 2026 and into next year. “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,” he argued.

“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,” Basner added.