There is a great sense of nostalgia for many filmmakers settling into Park City, Utah for the 2023 edition of the Sundance Film Festival. Not only are they fondly recalling the last in person edition of the world’s most famous independent showcase of films, which was 2020 right before the pandemic hit, but more so; there is a sense memory to the plethora of dollars showered on films as studios and streamers looked to buy movies to fill their release calendars.

In the past dozen or so years, checkbooks were wide open on such titles as Palm Springs ($17.5 million), The Birth of a Nation ($17.5 million), Cha Cha Real Smooth ($15 million), The Big Deal ($10.5 million) and Hamlet 2 ($10 million) as they secured impressive sales. But all bets were off when CODA garnered a robust $25 million from Apple +. While many insiders were left shaking their heads, as Sundance titles have a mixed financial track record at the box office, there was barely a negative prognosticator when the film took home the Oscar for Best Picture.

But the cinematic world is in a different place since 2020 and expectations are guarded as to what the sales market looks like. There are several buzz titles with major names that have generated early excitement, such as Drift (Cynthia Erivo), Cat Person (Emilia Jones and Nicholas Braun), Eileen (Anne Hathaway), Theater Camp (Ben Platt) and Fair Play (Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor). Of course, with over 101 feature titles, there is bound to be a Cinderella of the group and surprise audiences.

Launched by Robert Redford in 1985, the festival quickly became the premiere showcase for low-budget filmmakers; establishing such careers as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, Sian Heder and Robert Rodriguez. But with studios wedded to franchise blockbusters and streamers tightening their once extravagant purse strings, there is cautious optimism about what kind of sales Sundance 2023 might bring.

“If the movies screening at Sundance are dark dramas with zero cost that are made to be discoveries, that’s not what the market wants,” one unnamed source recently revealed to Screen Magazine. “We’re still in the tail end of what was allowed to get made during Covid. Small, personal films that cost a lot to get made…they’re not viable.”

For Tommy Oliver of Confluential Films, who has four titles in this year’s selection, he professed to Screen as well to be open minded.

“Most of the movies that are sales titles at Sundance are unlikely to be theatrical. If you think about the movies that have done well coming out of festivals like CODA, Nomadland, Cha Cha Real Smooth and Nanny, most of these movies don’t do big numbers at the box office, so maybe [the Sundance 2023 acquisitions] will be a hybrid release or a qualifying release [for an awards run].

Shaking up the playing field has been the unpredictability of films at the theatrical box office. Critically lauded titles such as TÁR, The Banshees of Inisherin and The Fabelmans have struggled to draw audiences into theaters against the might of sequels Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water. Older audiences, who used to be sporadic at best in going to the theater, now seem to prefer nestling on their home sofas and waiting for the films to come to them.

While there is still a bit of conceit around the concept of films needed to be seen on the big screen, reality has soaked in that streaming is here to stay and maybe a hybrid of release can be negotiated.

So, in between ski runs and late-night Main Street dinners, buyers could be playing a waiting game to see which new titles generate general audience excitement. The pulse of the people could be the ink that signs the check.