Their mission was to find the right studio home for “Theater Camp,” a backstage send-up that scored raucous reception at Sundance, where co-directors Nick Leiberman and Molly Gordon were joined by cast-members Ben Platt and Noah Galvin. The film entertained offers and fielded interest from several bidders, including some streamers.

“The market is historically slow,” says John Sloss, a vet sales agent and manager, who runs Cinetic Media. “I think these festivals are going to continue to be more elongated. We’ve all gotten a little older and lost our taste for all-night negotiating sessions.”

The market never reached fever pitch because major players like Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon aren’t writing big checks as freely as the once did. A newfound cost-consciousness seems to have gripped the media business as they deal with slow-down in subscription growth for their streaming services.

“The mix of buyers and the level of dealmaking shows that the market is super healthy,” notes CAA Media Finance’s Christine Hsu. WME’s McIntosh also highlighted the range of bidders – from deep-pocketed Apple to the indie platform Mubi — had all acquired films at different price levels. She called this diversity of deals “essential to the survival” of the art house market.

Ryan Heller, executive V.P. of film and documentary at Topic Studios, came to Sundance with three films, “Infinity Pool,” “Shortcomings” and “Theater Camp.” One of those movies, “Infinity Pool,” premiered having already locked up a distribution deal with Neon.

The other two were looking for a home — “Theater Camp” sold to Searchlight, while “Shortcomings” is still negotiating with potential buyers. Having an in-person festival helped stimulate interest in his films. “There was a palpable sense of excitement about getting back into the communal experience of watching movies,” he says. “How movies play in those theaters helps sales. A lot of the projects that sold early tended to be things that audiences had an instant reaction to.”

Other potential bidders say they are hoping for the prices to drop as more time passes. That’s when they plan to strike.

“A lot of movies were incredibly expensive,” says Tom Bernard, co-founder of Sony Classics. “They have huge budgets for a Sundance movie. A lot of these films cost between $10 to $20 million, and that’s a lot to pay for a movie.”

Accessibility Controversy

Jurors for the U.S. Dramatic Competition walked out of the premiere of “Magazine Dreams” because the festival was unable to provide caption device for deaf juror Marlee Matlin. Fellow jurors Jeremy O. Harris and Eliza Hittman walked out in solidarity with Matlin. The episode has shed an unflattering light on Sundance’s practices.

The festival was relying solely on closed captioning devices — viewed as outdated and inadequate technology in the disability community.

A better approach would have been for Sundance to require all filmmakers to provide an open caption version and to host at least one or two open caption screenings for each film during the festival run as do other festivals.

The festival did not mandate open caption version and merely “requested it very late in the process,” according to one knowledgeable source. “Magazine Dreams” was one of many films that did not have an open caption version on hand when it premiered.

Richie Siegel, co-founder of Inevitable Foundation that advocates on behalf of disabled screenwriters, was aghast by the conversation that sprung up in the wake of the walkout, with some suggesting that open captions will hurt potential sales.

Sundance will conduct a debrief after the festival to pinpoint what is could have done differently to avoid the jury walkout and subsequent backlash.

Many executives and agents said that Sundance seemed more sparsely attended. Major screenings were not always full, lines seemed shorter and restaurant reservations were more plentiful.