One Film's Journey To Hulu

A breakdown on how my latest film made its way to Hulu PLUS the pro's and con's of SVOD vs. AVOD distribution

If you missed my post yesterday titled opportunities within chaos, you can check it out here and by the way thank you for all the lovely comments and notes :)

Today one of my films Pinball premieres on Hulu and I wanted to break down how we got that deal in the first place since one of the number one questions I get asked all the time is - can you help me get a streaming deal for my film/doc/series?

First and foremost, in most cases you will not be selling your completed indie film directly to streamers, rather it will go through a distributor. In our case, we made a distribution deal with Vertical Entertainment and they pitched it to streamers which resulted in our Hulu deal. On a previous film, it was the same story - we did a deal with a distributor who got us a Netflix deal. It’s a very well oiled machine the distributor-to-streamer pipeline.

Most of the higher end distributors have a better chance of not only getting you a streaming deal in the first place, but getting you a better license fee than you could have negotiated yourself. They do enough volume, and even have output deals, which means your chances go way up that you’ll get an upfront payment.

Since I recently announced bringing back Distribution Consulting, I’m in the process of taking out a couple completed features and series to my network of distribution partners to help grease the wheels for eventual streaming deals and I can confirm, this distributor-to-streamer pipeline is very much still in effect!

Back to Pinball…. the Hulu (SVOD) premiere followed our TVOD launch in May and next up after our SVOD window comes AVOD…. and what I like to call the long tail of distribution :)

Some say AVOD is where it’s at for indie films in terms of revenue, but I’ve had mixed experiences where that’s concerned and I find it’s totally dependent on whether there’s a niche/targeted audience for the film to directly market to. The biggest downside to AVOD in my opinion is the lack of curation on the platforms - it’s just tons of content ‘dumped’ on a platform with even less chance of discoverability than there is on SVOD. There’s also rarely any upfront licensing fee on AVOD deals (unlike SVOD) and it puts even more pressure on the filmmaker to generate traffic for on-platform sales. But hey, when it works, it works really well! As in four to five figures a month well if you hit it out of the park.

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EP Strategy Consulting Sessions

In yesterday’s email I announced I’ll be doing a select handful of EP Strategy Consulting Sessions over the next 2-3 weeks and I have more details I can share with you now…

If you’re interested in a 45-60 min Zoom/Phone sessions with me where we break apart your project and do triage on it….. you can ask me any questions, and I also will advise you on the best path forward for wherever you’re at…. from development, to financing, to distribution.

• Click here for more details and to fill out the application

And if you want more ‘hands on’ help with getting your completed film or series to market, email me at stacey@filmspecific.com.

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As always, I’m happy to field questions in the comments section below and look forward to hearing from you!

To your success,

Stacey

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