TIFF Take-Away's & Insights

+ it's all about partnerships

Just wanted to do a brief check in after a few whirlwind days at TIFF to share some insights while they are fresh in my mind….

I alluded to production planning during strikes in my last newsletter and ironically, that ended up being a recurring theme during the many conversations I had. How are you doing it? How has your slate been impacted? Questions along those lines came up often.

Along those lines, here’s some other recurring themes I encountered daily….

• After years of unstoppable growth in film and series production brought on by the global streamers, the market may now be retracting but it’s also reigniting co-production activity once again.

• Co-productions and co-financing are coming back into vogue as it’s the only way to get bigger shows and movies made. For a while, the global streamers stepped in and were able to finance all those epic movies and series in one fell swoop, but with market contractions, that’s happening less and less and it’s forcing producers to the co-production model for getting their projects made.

• International sales companies are moving in the direction of playing a bigger role in getting shows financed by providing deficit financing, development funding, and even acting as Exec Producers and arranging all the financing for a project (and earning extra fees for those responsibilities).

• With the streamers taking fewer rights on films and series, it’s opening up the playing field for international distributors to pre-buy ‘must have’ projects once again. Don’t get me wrong, getting pre-sales isn’t easy by any means, but I’m seeing well packaged projects with meaningful IP get 10% and sometimes 20% of their budgets covered by pre-sales.

•The paths to getting your films and series made aren’t as clear cut as they once were, but it opens up opportunities for those who can figure all this co-production and co-financing stuff out.

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MIPCOM Series Submission

With TIFF in the rear view mirror I’m already looking towards MIPCOM next month where I’m building up a slate of series projects that are eligible for these new co-production models.

Have something you’ve been working on that you want to get out to potential partners? If you’ve already done some development on it and could use some help in shopping it or crafting an international co-production strategy and getting it out to production partners, I’m offering a Submissions Service in the lead up to MIPCOM that may be able to add value to your current efforts.

I’m seeing particular success right now with unscripted and docu-series, as well as repackaging digital series.

Just email me at stacey@filmspecific.com with details of your project and any relevant links I can check out please, and I’ll let you know if I can help.

For those of you who attended TIFF, what were your takeaways? Let me know in the comments section below and of course I’m always avail for any questions you have. Thank you!

Stacey

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