Despite being scheduled to kick off in less than two months, Cannes Film Festival and Marché du Film (Cannes Film Market) haven’t been cancelled in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The current state of the world and increasing numbers of fest cancellations has the industry concerned that Cannes, which is a huge international business hub, won’t go as planned — and a contingency plan is being developed. Hollywood agency CAA is leading an initiative to launch a virtual market in the event that the fest and market are cancelled.

“The market, which is still being thrashed out, would include coordinated movie screenings, buyer presentations from filmmakers and talent, video meetings, and promo and sizzle reel screenings,” Deadline reports. “The dealmaking wouldn’t be confined to agency packages and there wouldn’t be a registration fee to take part. It could also potentially include movies that are selected to take part in any scaled back version of the festival.”

The source details, “Travel restrictions permitting, movie screenings could take place in cities across Europe, the Americas and Asia, or they could happen online. Multiple video conferencing platforms are being considered to host the online market. The idea is that if the coronavirus were to eat into film markets in the fall, movie companies could also revert to this virtual market then as well.”

Following the news of the CAA-led initiative, Cannes announced that it is also working on bringing the market online. Jerome Paillard, the head of Marché du Film, told Variety “that if the festival is canceled, the online market will be able to serve all accredited participants. Accreditation rates for online participants will be about 50 percent of the regular rate for the physical market.”

Paillard suggests that the official virtual Cannes market will be “complementary” to CAA’s planned market, “which he considers to be more focused on presentations around packaging and promoting movies rather than market screenings,” Variety notes.