Surprising, right? Everything you read is that presales are a dying business, but according to Jonathan Wolf, AFM’s Managing Director, about 60% of the business done at this year’s AFM was in presales. This means more than half a billion USD in presales alone.
According to Mr. Wolf, the market for foreign presales came back by 2010 or 2011.
Schuyler Moore appears to think so. The title of his recent Forbes post “Netflix Will Rip The Heart Out of Presale Financing” says it all. Or at least his view of it. There is certainly a lot more to the picture than just the reach of Netflix.
Guest post from Film Specific’s Stacey Parks.
As I’m unwinding from AFM last week, it occurs to me that while many of you are experiencing Distribution Overwhelm, even more of you are experiencing Finance Overwhelm. Why? Because unless you have 100% cash in bank to make your film, what can you do to get your project off the ground?
The way I see it is we’ve entered a time where ‘cobbling together’ different forms of film financing is necessary to make the whole. Sure, private equity (or cash) still plays a role in this new model, but there’s also other methods that need to be explored and implemented to finance your film
Case in point – many filmmakers today are using private equity or cash for development funds, tax incentives and pre-sales for production funds, and crowd funding for finishing funds. Is that too many financing components? Let me put it to you this way….
Ignore a diversified approach to film financing at your peril!
So how and where do you begin on this journey then to cobble together financing for your film?
