Is Hollywood brave enough for a Nineties-style indie film renaissance?

Dear Gossips,

As we sprint toward August for no reason that makes sense except somehow it must be the sun’s fault, lineups for the fall film festivals are being unveiled. Venice’s lineup is out, and similar to Cannes earlier this year, it has almost no films from Hollywood studios this year. There is one film from Disney, Don’t Look Back in Anger, a documentary about Oasis’s reunion tour, but other than that, the festival is Hollywood-free.

Which is not to say that there won’t be stars, of course there will be. Danny Boyle’s Ink starring Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch will open the festival—following his first nomination for The Brutalist, it seems Pearce is coming for that Best Actor nod. And Venice will also host John Michael McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, about a couple of astray CIA agents in the 1970s starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. Malkovich is already tipped as a Best Actor contender, and Sam Rockwell’s peers LOVE to nominate him, so unless the movie sucks big time, they’re going to be a factor throughout the fall.

Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen, will premiere at Venice, too—in the midst of RPattz’s big year, I forgot about this movie for a second, but he could be an Oscar contender for this (though RPattz is a combination of weird and “makes it look easy”, which has held back Ryan Gosling in the past, let’s see if RPattz continues to be ignored for similar reasons). There are several actors having a Big Year, notably Zendaya, but so is Penelope Cruz, who has multiple Oscar-buzzy projects this year, including Florian Zeller’s Bunker, which co-stars Javier Bardem as an architect building a bunker for a billionaire.

TIFF will also screen Ink and Bunker, as well as new films from Andrew Haigh, Bassam Tariq, Rachel Morrison, Siân Heder, Pedro Almodovar, Takashi Miike, Sung Kang, Mike Leigh, and Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner Fjord. In all, these are good lineups, though again, almost no Hollywood studios are represented.

That hasn’t really slowed down the year in cinema, though. As previously discussed, the box office is going great, fueled in no small part by low-budget films and exciting new talent. And the major festivals creating interesting, diverse lineups without Hollywood might signal a Nineties-style indie renaissance knocking on our door. The indie sector has been an even bigger mess than the studios, financially speaking, but with audiences seeming more open to emerging talent in mainstream spaces, it might open the door to more robust indie filmmaking…assuming anyone wants to support it.

Thirty years ago, it was a no-brainer for studios to round out their slates with indie films they picked up relatively cheaply at film festivals, but now, studios have become so risk adverse they won’t take a chance on a festival film unless it’s loaded with bankable talent. It feels like we SHOULD be heading for a second indie renaissance, I’m just not sure we will because the studios, and increasingly the streamers, too, are allergic to risk. If we’re going to revitalize indie filmmaking, someone is going to have to be brave. I honestly wonder if Hollywood has it in them anymore.