The Indie Film Financing Model Comes For TV
As the TV bubble bursts, the industry is looking to incorporate more creative ways to finance series and are taking a page from the film financing playbook. PLUS other MIPTV take-aways
We left off last week talking about attaching actors to your film and I’m going to take a slight detour today and tease up some of my MIPTV take-away’s….
You guys know me - it takes me a minute to process everything after a market, but an article came out this week that sums up everything pretty well… and sums it up as it relates to all of us in the filmmaking community.
You can read it on THR here.
The headline is this….
As the TV bubble bursts, the industry is looking to incorporate more creative ways to finance series and are taking a page from the film financing playbook. Aren’t you glad you’re already here? As in, if you’ve been a student of structured finance for any amount of time and the formula we talk about often of pre-sales + equity + tax + soft money + debt and/or some combination of those, then you can visualize this ‘new’ path of getting your series off the ground.
All the usual caveats apply which is that you need to have a series concept the market wants in the first place, because the indie TV financing model is still predicated on having an ‘anchor’ broadcaster or streamer as your financing ‘base’ before you can pile on all the other components. But there are creative ways around that too because there’s a whole world out there full of broadcasters and streamers and it doesn’t have to be from your home country and increasingly, it is not. Hence why MIPTV and MIPCOM are such important markets right now for meeting potential anchor broadcasters from far flung places you wouldn’t be in contact with otherwise.
This indie financing model eventually requires you partner with an international sales/distribution company who can coordinate all this for you as well as make additional pre-sales on your behalf once your anchor broadcaster is a done deal. After the anchor broadcaster plus a few other pre-sales or co-producers are on board, then you start working your indie film magic in pulling the other pieces together.
An experienced EP can start the ball rolling for you on all this too before approaching distribution companies, and I’m doing that for a few FS Pro client series myself and in doing so, testing the limits of the indie tv financing model. I also have an internally developed series I’m forging forward on this path. So I shall report back!
In the mean time, I’d love to know any questions you have after you peruse the article or where the holes are for you. Hit me up in the comments below and let’s start a discussion.
On that note, I’ll leave you with that for today. I hope you have a wonderful day ahead and I’ll speak to you again soon!
To your success,
Stacey
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Hi Stacey, thanks for the THR article. Rings true. I have a six part TV mini-series. in development and a co-production with Brazil. My main objective is to presale with anchor streamer in Latin America (they take the entire territory for 50% of the budget in presale and find the balance of the budget is the rest of the World through a Foreign sales agent. My budget ($16MillionUSD) is relatively modest compared some of the flagship shows like LOR. That comes down to saving on cost in the below the line. So ideally take an indie film approach garners you the money to shoot and sell.