At a time when Hollywood is otherwise agonising over the future of cinema, anxiously awaiting box office grosses to return to pre-pandemic norms while fearing that streaming has irrevocably diminished film, Irish cinema is cresting a wave.
Minister for Culture and Arts Catherine Martin has travelled to Los Angeles with a record crop of Irish nominees ahead of Sunday’s Oscars. Of the 20 acting nominees this year, a quarter are Irish; Tallaght’s Richard Baneham looks dead certain to win a second visual effects Oscar for his work on Avatar: the Way of Water, and An Cailín Ciúin has been lauded as the first film in the Irish language to be nominated.
The 14 nominations in all for Irish people and Irish productions are undoubtedly a badge of honour for an industry that has grown immeasurably over the past 30 years, exporting talent to Hollywood while hosting prestigious productions like Star Wars.
Wildcard Distribution tasted some Oscar success two years ago when Wolfwalkers, which it released in Ireland, was nominated for Best Animated Feature, and is this month celebrating 10 years in business. Managing director Patrick O’Neill believes that the global success of Irish film will lift all boats.
While the Irish delegation will spend Oscar weekend talking up Irish talent and Ireland itself as a production location, companies such as Wildcard are contending with the same challenges as Hollywood around changing viewing patterns, platforms and models of distribution.
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Beyond Wolfwalkers, Wildcard has seen success over the past decade distributing hit Irish films such as Black 47, The Young Offenders, Cardboard Gangsters, The Hole in the Ground, Deadly Cuts, and Lyra, the documentary about murdered Derry journalist Lyra McKee.
Recent projects include About Joan starring Isabelle Huppert, this weekend’s My Sailor, My Love and GAA drama Lakelands, out in May.
O’Neill concedes that Wildcard first few years were “very tricky in terms of cashflow”, but the company is holding its own, even managing to eke out small profits during the Covid-hit years of 2020 (€4,800) and 2021 (€4,000).
As a “theatrical-led” domestic distributor in the Irish and UK markets, Wildcard acquires the rights to distribute films, primarily in cinemas, but also across transactional and subscription video on demand platforms such as iTunes and Netflix, television channels, arts and community centres, and even airlines like Aer Lingus.
As O’Neill explains, Wildcard will negotiate acquisitions with international sales agents at the major annual film markets – Berlin in February, Cannes in May, the American Film Market in November – and at festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival and the Galway Film Fleadh, but it also keeps in close contact with local productions to assess which upcoming Irish films would be “good fits” for the company.
“In terms of those markets, you have all the sales agents with their booths and posters and promos, and there are thousands upon thousands of films, so it’s about doing the research on what might be available, and it comes down to relationships – sales agents we’ve worked with in the past who know what we like,” O’Neill explains.
Films can be acquired at the script stage, during production or once they are completed and have been shown at film festivals. Often when a distribution deal is agreed prior to production, as Wildcard did with famine revenge drama Black 47, the funds are used to fund the making of the film.
“That's what our investment can give a value to a producer,” O’Neill says. “It can be risky because you’re going off the script and the talent attached. Some people might say, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got Colin Farrell attached,” and it’s great, but [actors] can get replaced, so there’s a lot of faith involved.”
Distributors like Wildcard are also responsible for its films’ marketing campaigns, designing posters and publicity materials, as well as the associated spend – there are a lot of upfront costs.
“In the first five years of business, we had a very good relationship with our bank, who were able to give us bridging loans,” O’Neill says, adding that each release would see a couple of “sticky” months before the company started to deliver on its revenue projections.
The company also sub-distributes films such as Amy and Moonlight in Ireland on behalf of UK firms. In such cases, Wildcard receives a flat fee irrespective of the film’s success.
Such deals can often “help to keep the lights on” when operating in a market as small as Ireland, but Wildcard has tasted box-office success with The Young Offenders, the Cork-set comedy that led to a spin-off BBC-RTÉ series, and Black 47, which earned over €1m in Ireland.
“It’s that philosophy of, if it’s only an inch wide, you try and go a mile deep,” O’Neill says of Wildcard’s comprehensive approach to distributing films in Ireland. He also credits the company’s agility, low overheads, and dedicated staff as well as discipline in avoiding bidding wars for its longevity.
When acquiring films, there’s a spectrum of costs. Sometimes a distributor might pay nothing for the rights, agreeing to split any profit with the sales agent after the publicity and marketing costs have been recouped. There are also ‘net deals’ whereby the distributor takes a commission off the top, and the rest going toward recouping expenses and the rights holder.
In the past, Wildcard has paid six-figure sums to secure distribution rights, which O’Neill describes as being a “nerve-racking experience,” but in terms of revenue generation, the company’s eggs are not in the one basket and are fairly evenly divided between cinema releases, streaming/rentals, and UK deals.
“I can safely say I can identify a year where [the most profitable arm of the business] has been any of those things – it can oscillate,” he says, adding that the company had strong cinema years between 2016 and 2018 with the successive releases of The Young Offenders, Cardboard Gangsters and Black 47.
“Each of those strong box office years would lead to strong video on demand or home entertainment revenues the year after that. It’s like catching drops of water with buckets, and the longer you go – we’ve released over 100 films now – you like to think you have a lot of little buckets. A lot of the films we did 10 years ago would still be delivering small amounts.”
The company has a good relationship with Netflix and Wildcard films such as Deadly Cuts, Redemption of a Rogue, Cardboard Gangsters, Michael Inside, and Black 47 remain on the platform.
Wildcard has also worked with Apple for the release of Wolfwalkers as well as Amazon and newer players such as Disney+ and Paramount+. Wildcard receives a flat film to fee, typically of up to mid-six figures for a bigger film, although typically five figures, to licence a film to a platform for a set period of time with no performance-related bonuses.
“DVD was supposedly a big money-maker [for the film industry] and we came in at the tail end of that. [When the streaming platforms arrived], I don't think it was like a boom time, I think they were essentially replacing lost revenues to the industry,” O’Neill says of the fluctuating secondary market for films, and he is adamant that cinema is essential for maintaining the primacy of film, and especially independent film.
“Nothing will get you profile in the marketplace like a theatrical release,” he says. “You've got posters up in the cinemas; reviewers talking about the film; your cast and your director will do interviews; you’ve got coverage online, your trailers getting covered, and if a film goes straight to streaming that’s not always the case.
“Even when you talk about films going to the platforms, if it's their own films that they're pushing, they’ll give it a big push, but often when it's an acquisition title, they may not get the same push.”
When cinemas were closed during Covid, Wildcard survived with assistance from Screen Ireland and the government’s wage subsidy schemes, but it oddly benefitted when business was slow after reopening as cinemas still needed films to exhibit, even if attendances were minuscule.
Coming out of Covid in late 2021, however, the big studios had a backlog of films that had been kept on hold and that would dominate several screens at cinemas as consumers started to return in greater numbers.
Without having benchmarked 2023 against previous years, O’Neill expresses confidence that the box office is returning to normal. The success of the Avatar sequel certainly ensured a bumper start to the new year – the film has earned close to $2.3bn worldwide since its Christmas release.
While British-based chains operating in Ireland such as Odeon, Vue and Cineworld book out of the UK, O’Neill believes Ireland is lucky to have locally based chains like Omniplex and IMC Cinemas that are supportive of Irish film as well as family-owned independent cinemas littered around the country, with whom the company can negotiate flexible deals.
Furthermore, Wildcard does a lot of work with grassroots organisations and groups to “mobilise an audience” for films, and it also secondarily exhibits movies in arts centres for film nights through the Access Cinema organisation.
Ultimately, O’Neill doesn’t think cinema is going away anytime soon, although he thinks the business model “probably needs to be challenged a little bit” with subscriptions like those offered by Cineworld and Omniplex, and he concedes that certain genres may continue to struggle as event cinema and kids films reign.
“The challenge for us as independent is to up our game in terms of the quality and giving the audience what they want,” O’Neill says -- and he wouldn't mind a taste of Oscar success either.
(Pic: Shutterstock)
