Europe

Cannes Recap Part Three: North American Acquisitions & Other Marché Business

Liz Shackleton

01 Jun 2026 — 9 min read

The Black Ball (La Bola Negra)

This third part of Streamlined’s Cannes recap is looking at the buying and selling activity at the Marché du Film, with a round-up of North American acquisitions announced during and after the market, and a few lines on the Asian sellers, particularly those from Korea and Japan, who were doing brisk business on their Cannes official selection titles. The links round-up at the end of the newsletter includes all the deals announced by Asian companies in the trades during and immediately after Cannes.

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What Were Neon, Netflix & Sony Buying In Cannes?

It’s a challenging time for international buyers with global streamers stripping out the pay-one window, leaving them heavily dependent on theatrical, but box office revenues still not recovering to pre-pandemic levels in most international territories. Sales agents are also feeling the pinch, even those backed by Hollywood companies, with news breaking on the eve of Cannes that WME Independent was shutting down its international sales operation (co-head Alex Walton is reportedly setting up his own venture, while Deb McIntosh will continue to handle North American sales).

Among Asian sellers, most are technically either the international division of a major studio or production company, or are also operating as financiers and/or buyers, although a few plucky independents, including Golden Network Asia, Rediance, Pallalax Films and Derek Lui’s new Sydney-based outfit Surprise H, were all testing out the market and very much present in Cannes.

Meanwhile, the Marché du Film was reporting record levels of attendance – 16,000 registered market participants, 600 exhibiting companies and 1,700 buyers – and yet for the first few days the Palais and Riviera felt strangely empty. While the European and North American side of the industry seemed to arrive earlier and also leave earlier – holding meetings from the day before the market started and disappearing over the first weekend – many Asian companies seemed to be arriving later and staying for a shorter period of time.

Japan was an exception, of course, recording a 50% increase in attendance due to the designation as Marché Country of Honour, with many execs arriving early for a packed programme of conferences, pitching sessions and screenings. Marché organisers estimated that Japan was the fifth most represented country this year.

As for the big deals – they took a while to start trickling through, with no real action until the first weekend when A24 swooped on global rights to Club Kid for a reported $17m. Following that, there was a steady but not torrential flow of North American acquisitions, probably tempered by the fact that many titles had come to the festival with NA buyers already attached.

Neon arrived at Cannes with several titles previously acquired, including Christian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner Fjord, making it the seventh year in a row that it’s had the top prize winner in Cannes (following Parasite, Titane, Triangle Of Sadness, Anatomy Of A Fall, Anora & It Was Just An Accident). The New York-based distributor had also pre-acquired several other competition titles (see list below) and also produced Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell, which screened in an Out of Competition slot.

Netflix and Amazon both made a few acquisitions during the market. Netflix picked up the world outside France on animated feature In Waves, from French-Vietnamese filmmaker Phuong-Mai Nguyen, and is reportedly close to acquiring North American rights on The Black Ball (La Bola Negra), starring Penelope Cruz and Glenn Close, and Gentle Monster, with Lea Seydoux. All three titles could presumably be awards plays for the streamer. Amazon swooped on market title Pumping Black, a cycling drama directed by Mimi Cave and starring Natalie Portman and Jonathan Bailey.

Among legacy studios, Warner Bros’ new speciality label Clockwork and Sony Pictures Classics were both active. Clockwork picked up The Brigands Of Rattlecreek, the highly-anticipated revenge Western from Park Chan-wook, who was serving as Cannes competition jury boss this year. Scripted by S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk), the film is set to star Matthew McConaughey, Austin Butler, Pedro Pascal and Chinese actress Tang Wei. Sony took a slew of rights to French filmmaker Louis Clichy’s animated film Iron Boy and Iranian director Pegah Ahangarani’s documentary Rehearsals For A Revolution.

Every year at Cannes, it feels like the international sales business becomes ever more concentrated around a small number of sellers and North American buyers – Goodfellas, MK2 and The Match Factory selling a significant slab of the official selection cake, with North American acquisitions dominated by Neon, A24 and Mubi. Streamlined has started compiling a list below of North American and other major international deals concluded during or prior to the market and will attempt to update it as new deals come through.

In the world outside North America, sellers were saying it’s tougher than ever to sell into Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. In Asia that’s partly due to theatrical wobbles in some territories, but also due to the strength of local-language films which are not leaving a huge amount of room for non-Asian product. Chinese buyers were particularly quiet at Cannes this year as the recent wave of arthouse acquisitions have not yet paid off. The Middle East is of course disrupted by war, but Front Row Filmed Entertainment and Gulf Film were still buying, while Mad Distribution continues to pick up Arab and some African titles for the MENA region.

NORTH AMERICA ACQUISITIONS AT CANNES 2026:

1-2 SPECIAL:
Everytime, dir: Sandra Wollner
La Gradiva, dir: Marine Atlan

A24:
Club Kid, dir: Jordan Firstman (global rights)

AMAZON:
Pumping Black, dir: Mimi Cave (global rights) [market title]

JANUS FILMS:
The Dreamed Adventure, dir: Valeska Grisebach
The Samurai And The Prisoner, dir: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

MUBI:
Coward, dir: Lukas Dhont (NA, UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Turkey)
Fatherland, dir: Paweł Pawlikowski (NA, UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Mexico, India)
Minotaur, dir: Andrey Zvyagintsev (NA, UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Latam)
Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma, dir: Jane Schoenbrun (NA, UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico)

NEON:
All Of A Sudden, dir: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Fjord, dir: Christian Mungiu
Her Private Hell, dir: Nicolas Winding Refn
Hope, dir: Na Hong-jin
Paper Tiger, dir: James Gray
Sheep In The Box, dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda
The Unknown, dir: Arthur Harari

NETFLIX:
In Waves, dir: Phuong Mai Nguyen (world outside France)
Gentle Monster, dir: Marie Kreutzer (NA, UK, Aus/NZ) TBC
La Bola Negra, dir: Javier Ambrossi & Javier Calvo TBC
Sacrifice, dir: Romain Gavras [market title]

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS:
Iron Boy, dir: Louis Clichy (NA & Latam, India, SEA TV)
Rehearsals For A Revolution, dir: Pegah Ahangarani (NA & Latam, Asia ex Japan, NZ, Turkey, Portugal & airlines)

WARNER BROS CLOCKWORK:
Brigands Of Rattlecreek, dir: Park Chan-wook [market title]

What Was Keeping Asian Sellers Busy In Cannes?

Every year it also feels like the number of deals being reported by Asian sales companies gets smaller – although to be fair, European sellers including MK2 Films, Goodfellas, Charades and Playtime, were handling quite a few of the Asian titles in official selection and did some business on them prior to and during the market (see links round-up below).

The two Korean titles in selection – Na Hongjin’s Hope in competition and Yeon Sang-ho’s Colony in Midnight Screenings – are both handled by Korean sellers (Plus M Entertainment and Showbox, respectively) who reported record levels of business on each. As both are genre films from leading Korean directors, and featuring top Korean (and international) talent, they proved to be an easy sell.

Plus M claimed Hope, which stars Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, has broken the all-time record for pre-sales of a Korean film with more than 200 territories sold, covering nearly half the film’s budget before it’s even released. Neon has the film for North America and English-speaking territories, while Mubi and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions have also signed on for a bunch of international territories. Well Go USA has North American rights to Colony.

The three Japanese films in competition are slower dramas, but deals were closed on at least two of them during the market. Nepal’s transgender drama Elephants In The Fog, which won the jury prize in Un Certain Regard, was also selling strongly for Best Friend Forever.

Among markets titles being shopped in Cannes – there were patterns that started to emerge just after the pandemic that are now becoming deeply ingrained grooves. More often than not, Asian genre titles receive a theatrical release in their home country and perhaps a handful of other territories before moving to streamers for the rest of the world. But there are exceptions...

Southeast Asian genre films are starting to travel more among ASEAN countries for theatrical release, in particular horror, and occasionally break out even further afield. The bigger Japanese anime IPs travel pretty much everywhere, except mainland China where Japanese films are effectively banned following a political spat between China and Japan. Some Japanese and Korean live-action films also travel around the Asia Pacific region, in particular Korea’s supernatural, occult-style thrillers and romantic dramas based on popular novels or manga from Japan.

Sales into North America and Europe follow two routes – occasional festival titles through arthouse distributors (Neon has Hope, All Of A Sudden and Sheep In The Box, while Janus has Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai And The Prisoner), while genre titles go through Well Go USA or specialist distributors focusing on diaspora audiences (3388 Films, Eastern Edge Films etc).

The links round-up below includes all the sales and acquisitions activity announced by Asian companies in Cannes. Of course, there’s also a large volume of business that goes unreported. I’ve found that in tough times like these, some sellers don’t like to draw too much attention to their clients lest competitors also approach them.