$1.3 Billion Goes Poof..seeking Sundance

Sundance and the Single Documentary Economy: The $1.3 Billion Cost of Missing Out

by Peter Hamilton

Link: https://www.documentarytelevision.com/documentary-budget/sundance-and-the-single-documentary-economy-the-1-3-billion-cost-of-missing-out/

2019 January 19

The documentary niche has remarkable financial scale, as measured by the films seeking selection at Sundance.

• Let’s assume that the average production cost of all 2,649 Sundance submissions for 2019 is $500,000.
  • Actual budgets range from around $200,000 up to $5+ million.
  • $500K is a conservative average.

Production Cost:

• 2,600 documentaries were “Not Accepted” in 2019.
• The total production expense of the “Not Accepted” films would be $1.3 billion!
• My 2018 estimate was $800+ million in unsuccessful production costs.

Source: Sundance Film Festival, DocumentaryBusiness.com

Takeaways

• The documentary feature gains ever more popularity, celebrity and prestige as a medium of creative expression and investigation.
• It attracts funding from broadcasters and platforms, governments, foundations, the hyper- hyper-rich, A-listers, crowd funders, BF’s, the mortgage on grandma’s beach cottage, personal overdrafts, and more.
• Few productions ever recover these contributions from their commercial distribution efforts.
• However many projects do succeed by non-commercial measures: for example by inspiring social change or advancing the careers of their filmmakers.
• And BTW, lots of terrific films are not accepted at Sundance but go on to find recognition and acclaim at other festivals and markets.

SUNDANCE NUMBERS 2019

Link to Source: https://www.documentarytelevision.com/conferences-markets/sundance-film-festival-selections-2019-what-are-the-odds-for-documentaries/

Peter Hamilton's annual breakdown of the Sundance numbers, I find this really helpful and depressing.

A Sundance Film Festival award lags only behind an Oscar nomination as a measure of success for documentarians.
 
But what are the odds that a U.S. or international documentary will earn a slot on the program?



Submissions

• 2,649 Documentary Features were submitted to the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, which opens on January 24:
  • 767 were from the U.S.
  • 1,882 were international submissions.

Selections

• Sundance selected 49 feature documentaries.
  • The success rate is 1.8%
  • That’s down from 2.9% in 2018.

Origin

• US: 31 selections / 4.0% acceptance rate.
• International: 18 selections / 1.0% success rate.

Prior Funding by Sundance 
16 of the 49 selections (33%) had received prior funding from the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program:

U.S. Documentary Competition Midnight Family
Where’s My Roy Cohn?
Jawline
Hail Satan?
One Child Nation
Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements
American Factory
Share
The Last Black Man in San Francisco

World Cinema Documentary Competition
Advocate
Lapü
The Magic Life of V
Midnight Traveler
The Edge of Democracy
Birds of Passage
NEXT: The Infiltrators (Docudrama)

Takeaways

• Sundance’s inside track for talent development multiplies your odds of acceptance, but not of winning a prize, as I posted in 2018.
• The Sundance selection bar is higher for international projects than U.S. ones.
• Congrats to the 49 acceptances for overcoming these huge odds and winning acceptance through their talents and timeliness.
• However, few Sundance-recognized documentaries go on to a successful theatrical run.
• There’s always IDFA, TIFF, Berlin, Hot Docs, SXSW and other prestigious international and regional festivals.
• And licensing and distribution deals across the multiple platforms that are available today.

Narrative Features

• The odds are only slightly higher for Narrative / Scripted Features.
  • 75 of 2,266 submitted projects were selected.
  • That’s an acceptance rate of only 3.3%

Winners & Competitors at Sundance

• You can study the full Sundance documentary program for 2019 with links here…
• Here are the 2019 Documentary Premieres.
• Many thanks to the Sundance Press Office for sharing the data.

The Netflix / Sundance Anti-Case Study

• Don’t miss The Cleaners, our Anti-Case Study from Sunny Side of the Doc.
• We covered the dashed hopes of Berlin-based Gebrueder Beetz to win a Netflix deal after defying the odds and winning a slot at Sundance 2018.

PBS Documentary Slots: Similar Odds
POV

• When I last checked, POV accepted 16 films out of around 1,000 submissions.
• The acceptance rate was 1.6%
• Read more about POV in our detailed 2015 coverage.

Independent Lens

• Independent Lens accepted around 22 films out of 725+/- submissions.
• That’s a 3% acceptance rate.
• Read about ITVS and Independent Lens in our 2015 coverage here.
• I hope to update these PBS #’s.

Note: Sundance acceptance data as of January 11, 2019. May be subject to correction.