Distributors As Co-Producers
+ the rise of sales agencies as mini-studios
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The Rise Of Distributors As Co-Producers
The other day I read about another sales agency raising private funding in order to get more involved in early stage projects. Turns out there’s quite a few companies now operating with private backing and/or credit lines to help cash flow development and even production of projects.
Honestly there was a time when this would have been unheard of! Traditionally sales agents were quite happy to come in at the end, do the sales job, take expenses and commissions, and leave Producers to do all the heavy lifting (and deal with all the headaches).
But in the last several years as we’ve discussed many times here before, sales agents have become co-producers, exec producers, and even producers. And originating producers have had to rely more on distributors to get their projects off the ground. It’s become much more a symbiotic relationship than years past.
Along the way, something else has become abundantly clear - Independent Producers, most of whom operate without the ability to line up institutional funding like our sales agent friends, must raise some type of development funding in order to sustain themselves while they work to get talent attached to projects and develop their IP.
Traditionally, producers were paid a ‘development fee’ by studios in order to compensate for this period of time while packaging and developing IP on spec. But if you’re operating outside of the studio system, you typically have to raise development funds privately, or like a few of our FS Pro members have done recently, via crowd funding initiatives.
Hopefully sales agents, many of them now acting like mini-studios, will step in and offer some form of development fee to producers whom they are working with to expedite the packaging of projects to bring to marketplace. It’s a trend I hope to see take shape even more going forward.
Keep your ear to the ground as we approach EFM next week, you’ll be hearing more about this evolution of distributors as co-producers of projects.
What are your thoughts on these developments? I’d love to hear any creative ways you’ve come across to raise development funds for your project - hit me up in the comments below!
On that note, I’ll wrap things up for today. Have a wonderful day ahead and speak again soon!
Stacey
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The Australian EP I was beginning to work with said my project is too big "for his wheelhouse. He would not be able to do it credit". Ah, well.
Which sales agent are fronting packaging funds. Can we approach them?
The approach of Bringing in Sales agents as co-Financiers at the Development stage is something I adopted several years ago. It mitigates risk both ways as a Showrunner/Creator/Producer and them as Sales Agents. It also informs your sales projections vs Budget and your cast.