How AFM Landed at the Former “Ultimate Party Hotel in the World”
For the first time in 33 years, veteran buyers and sellers will be wandering a trade floor far from Santa Monica during the American Film Market. Nearly every year since 1991, the U.S. film industry’s leading content market has set up shop at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. The old digs weren’t exactly luxurious, but no one ever said the nitty-gritty world of indie film sales was the glamour-facing side of the movie business. The Loews met the industry’s needs, and for a frantic week every November, it was the place a generation of international dealmakers, distributors and Hollywood pretenders called home.
But the property changed ownership last year, forcing AMF organizers to hold the 2023 market at the nearby Le Meridian Delfina. That location disappointed many attendees due to its cramped layout, prompting AFM to reassess what venue would best serve its future. Organizers’ answer: To pack up and head to Vegas. This year’s AFM takes place at the Palms Casino Resort, joining other major industry events like CinemaCon, the Consumer Electronics Show and Global Gaming Expo in leveraging the city’s endless convention space, affordability and corporate-friendly ethos.
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“The strength of the AFM lies in its ability to create community and present a sophisticated platform for all our participants’ activities in one convenient location,” says Clay Epstein, IFTA Chairperson and President of Film Mode Entertainment. “The Palms enables us to do all of that and beyond.”
Located just off the Las Vegas Strip and boasting 703 rooms and a 94,065 sq ft casino, the Palms was built in the late 1990s by Vegas impresario George Maloof. By the standards of Sin City, the casino has attained a modest amount of infamy and lore over its 25 years in operation. When planning the project, Maloof said he wanted to create “the ultimate party hotel in the world,” a casino resort that would include restaurants, nightclubs, a concert hall, a 14-screen cinema, a recording studio and more. To drum up buzz for the launch and attract celebrities to the resort, Maloof invited known high rollers and Hollywood agents to a party at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, which was decked out with fake gambling tables and promotional displays hyping the vision for the resort. The pitch had some success: When the Palms opened its doors on November 15, 2001, guests included Nevada governor Kenny Guinn, along with Pamela Anderson, Matt Dillon, Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Pesci, Tara Reid, Dennis Rodman, Martin Sheen and Charlize Theron. Throughout the early 2000s, the Palms was a go-to party spot off the strip, drawing hard-partying Hollywood celebs of the era — Paris Hilton was a regular — and providing competition to the then-preeminent Hard Rock Casino. The Palms’s popularity got a further boost after The Real World: Las Vegas shot a full season in the resort in 2002, while the compound’s movie theaters hosted a diverse collection of Hollywood premieres throughout that era, including Jennifer Garner’s nearly forgotten early Marvel movie Elektra (2005), Rocky Balboa (2006) and Michael Jackson’s This Is It (2009).
But it wouldn’t be a real Vegas landmark without a whiff of seediness. In 2013, bartenders, drink runners and bouncers were arrested in the resort’s nightclubs and pool parties for offering drugs and prostitutes to undercover police officers posed as partygoers (one staffer attempted to sell a cop a full pound of cocaine). Following an investigation, the Palms was fined $1 million by the Nevada Gaming Commission and the resort promised to revamp its management and security.
By the end of its first decade in business, the Palms’ youth hotspot status had begun to wane. When the resort held its 10-year anniversary bash in November 2011, the event was a decidedly low-key celebration of employees and local regulars rather than Hollywood celebs. By 2012, there was a change of ownership and a $50 million renovation that attempted to update the resort’s design to better reflect the tastes of an older demographic. In 2016, a company called Red Rock Resorts bought out the Palms yet again for $312.5 million. The company then launched an even more ambitious $620 million renovation, adding new restaurants and nightclubs in a bid to rekindle the property’s past party buzz. But it was to no avail. In May 2021, Red Rock revealed that it had agreed to sell the Palms for $650 million to the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, a Native American tribe of 200 members from San Bernardino County, California. Today, the Palms is the first and only Las Vegas resort to have a Native American owner. In its current incarnation, the resort caters more to corporate events and local gamblers than nightlife creatures. So, woe to the Loews, but AFM should feel right at home there.
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