Sundance Offers a Glimmer of Hope for the Struggling Documentary Market: “We’re No Longer in a DOA Situation”

Writer Addie Morfoot reports on how the 40th Sundance Film Festival demonstrated the resilience of independently made documentaries, with notable interest in celebrity-focused docs like Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story and Will & Harper, prompting bidding wars and optimism among sales agents, despite some challenges of market consolidation and a shift toward conservative payouts by streaming giants, indicating a more competitive landscape for theatrical distribution. Comparisons are made between sales and interest at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and the previous year, where buzzy titles took a long time to find distribution, if at all.