The American Film Market: What It Is, Why It Matters for Horror

Get the advance word on upcoming genre films

No doubt by now you’ve been seeing some headlines here on Shock preceded by “AFM ’11.” These are news items related to the annual American Film Market which is held the first week of November in Santa Monica, California.

This is Shock’s fourth year covering the event, a sprawling eight days of deal-making and screenings beginning tomorrow. As in previous years, Shock will be dishing a lot of news, showing off some of the promotional art on display, reporting on some of the early footage film reps are allowing us to see and, hopefully, providing advance screening reviews.

You might wonder why the American Film Market is such a big deal and why Shock tries to be so thorough in its coverage.

The market is the frontline of upcoming horror films. A hub of independent, mainstream and international genre movies that are in the works or on the cusp of being discovered. It’s the place where we learned Scream 4 was going to be a reality; where we showed you the very first images from Pascal Laugier’s Tall Man with Jessica Biel; and heard that Silent Hill 2: Revelations was in the works. Those are just a few examples.

News about films that you’ll be excited about in the months or years ahead is often broken at the AFM and Shock will be there to give you all of the details, good or bad. It’s also a solid event to see what horror trends are dying, thriving or coming up – something Shock will be keeping an eye on.

Because the news flows fast at the AFM, some headlines are quickly bumped off of our homepage, that’s why I recommend heading to our AFM HUB and bookmarking it; there you will find all AFM news breaks in one spot.

Source: Ryan Turek, Managing Editor