In addition to all of challenging economic factors, one adversary indie film has had in the last year is the press. Gone are the puff pieces about filmmakers "making it" by gambling their mortgage on their indie film and then scoring big. Those human interest-type stories have faded away in the last year as the financing of the indie sector itself became the story. There's not a lot new in Lauren A.E. Schuker's Wall Street Journal piece,
"Indie Films Suffer Dropoff in Rights Sales," but when it comes to independent film foreign sales, the piece impressively catalogues all the bad news in one place.
Here's the conclusion, but I'd recommend clicking on the link and reading the whole piece.
Still, [Initial's Graham King] says the film industry has never seen the foreign-sales market slow across the board as has happened in recent months. "You always had economic woes somewhere, and you could make it up by selling to another country," says Mr. King. "But now it's on a global basis, and the independents overseas have lost all their credit -- so without that credit they can't buy movies. It's very, very worrying."
Hat tip:
Noah Harlan.
#
posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/20/2009 12:55:00 AM
Comments (2)
This problem has been building for years and it just isn't one caused by sales agents not having credit to pick up new titles. The real problem is that the number of profitable outlets for even the best independent titles has shrunk to the point where there is almost no margin of error for a good film, let alone a decent but flawed one.
#
posted by Bruce Frigeri @ 4/20/2009 1:20 PM
I'd call this a market correction. For too many years, producers and sales agents have been charging ridiculous prices for distribution rights, using int'l distributors as a faucet for cash. About time we had a buyers' market for a change.
#
posted by @ 4/20/2009 11:54 PM
