AFM Then & Now

+ everything old is new again

Being in the film business so long I always associate November with AFM (kinda wild?). Anyway, earlier in the week we talked about How To Build Your Financing Dream Team ahead of AFM and today I’m going to follow that up with a trip down memory lane and discuss AFM’s traditional playbook vs. today’s playbook and yes, how everything old is new again.

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👊 But first!

I’ve got a few Film Market Consulting slots left for those who could use some extra strategic guidance on how to go into the market and of course engage in all the best practices for follow up. Hit me up with your situation and I’ll let you know if I can help or else point you in the right direction as best as I’m able: stacey@filmspecific.com.

Or join us in FS Pro where you can access my hand-picked lists of who to contact and meet with, plus targeted advice about your project or slate. Plus connect with the other members who are all getting ready to head to AFM armed with strategies galore.

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AFM Then & Now

The traditional playbook for many Film sales companies is to premiere a film at one of the major festivals (Sundance, Cannes, TIFF, Venice), hopefully secure a few major territories from that premiere (including North America), and then take the film to AFM to sell off the remaining territories worldwide and realize a profit. Rinse, repeat.

However that practice came to a halt for a handful of years once the Streamers started gobbling up Worldwide rights to these Tier 1 festival films, therefore leaving no remaining territories left to sell at AFM. During those years, many of the international distributors became flustered as their supply chains were interrupted. Many went out of business. Some pivoted to producing their own local content and never looked back. Others held on to ride out the storm.

Well we’re back to where we started - the original AFM playbook. The streamers have stopped hoovering up worldwide rights which on the one hand is bad for filmmakers as there goes those nice big up-front paydays! But on the other hand it brings us back to owning your distribution and selling off rights territory by territory - a more bespoke approach.

Which means AFM has become a more vital place of business again. Honestly there was a stretch of time where none of the bigger films had any territories available to sell leaving buyers empty handed. AFM was a shell of its former self. A deserted wasteland of nothing but low budget ‘schlock’ available for sale.

But everything old is new again and I’m looking at the sales companies slates going into the market and wow, what a difference a few years makes. The mid and high budget indie sector seems to be thriving again ($15-$30-$60 million). Look forward to reading the daily trades on all the deals that close, who’s buying what for how much and with whom.

Today the biggest hurdle for sales agents is having new, fresh, well-packaged product to launch that is in line with new ‘budget conscious’ market realities. I didn’t go into it here but along with this reversion to territory-by-territory sales are smaller margins for international distributors, partially due to increased marketing costs for the theatrical window. I’ll get into that in my next installment but suffice it to say, there’s downward pressure on film budgets because of lower licensing fees around the world.

As a Producer / supplier to the market you’d be best served on focusing on that one thing - packaging your projects for the market in line with budgetary restrictions. Figure that out, and you and your projects will be in hot demand.

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In my next AFM installment I’m going to talk about what happened to the Million Dollar Blueprint and how the Home Entertainment boom contributed to the AFM glory days.

Stay tuned!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone and speak to you again soon….

Stacey

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