As we recall, Amazon came out to be one of the most aggressive buyers in the 2019 acquisition market. It made a humongous deal worth $46 billion for Late Night, Brittany Runs a Marathon, Honey Boy and The Report. But it didn’t turn out as it was hoped. Those films gave out an overall grossing of only $26 million. The huge difference did raise some eyebrows.
The Amazon Studios Head Jennifer Salke was there at the Sundance Film festival 2020 and it was hinted that there were no regrets on 2019’s actions. She hopes that they will put up a great challenge in the bidding and her acquisition team looks forward to getting their hands on the best 2020 Sundance movies.
Hearing her implied that even with not much grossing last year they are not going to hold back when the right opportunity knocks on the door and 2020 Sundance festival brings many. Moreover, she also elaborated that since the last time there are changes in the implementation of the strategy and they invested a lot in the renovation of stream services.
Salke backed up the performance of the films; “The Report” and “The Last Night” saying that they live up to the expectations with the backend subscribers. But still they hoped for more. She added that the results were different but not at all surprising. In their future campaigns they are going to put all focus on Prime Premium. But still for some products they are going to prefer the theoretical releases.
She added, “But as far as the other movies and competing for a big star-driven dramas, romantic comedy, something we feel that could really resonate across Prime subscribers, you could see us spend even more than we do at Sundance to compete for those kinds of films,” Salke also said that it would make the team happy to invest more as the movies paid off at a lot of occasions.
After that, she talked about two prestigious pieces of art “One Child Nation” and “Honey Boy”. And said that these movies earned support from critics and some prizes as well.
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