Glen Reynolds, Founder of Circus Road Films: Straight to digital,
no theatrical. The range is kind of zero, almost zero to…
Film Courage: How much does a film's budget impact what it'll sell for? Let's say someone makes a
film for half a million, is a distributor likely to make an offer of half a million?
Glen: No, in fact they don't care what the budget is. They may care from the point of
view of interest like if they're knowing thing about production and they think “Oh wow this looks
great, what did you spend?” From that perspective the distributors in general all they care about is
what it's worth on the market? They're going to look at your film and compare it to other
films in their catalog or in their imagination or wherever. However they make their subjective
evaluation of your film and decide okay we think once it goes out into the world it'll make
we think we'll make a million dollars then they might be advancing and they really have to think
it's going to make a million dollars in order to advance half a million dollars because there's
still going to be costs for them to especially if there's if there's if they're if they're buying
something for half a million dollars their price spending a couple million dollars to monetize that
thing they can't just you buy something for half a million dollars you can't just put it on the
on transactional VOD and hope to sell it later films don't make that much money when you do that
so it's all about what what how much revenue do we feel like this can make for us or how many
viewers do we feel like or how many subscribers are we in a game because of this this title
that's the way Netflix and Hulu and people like that look at it because at the end of the day
I've seen half a million dollars films that look like they were made for two dollars I've seen
half a million dollars films that look like they were made for seven million dollars and so that
goes to the talent of the production company and the filmmaker and the ability to get value from
what they spent why do we hear that it's bad for filmmakers to be transparent about their budget
so with regard to being transparent to a distributor I think that if it's because it could
go you they could go badly two different ways if I tell a distributor I made it for half a million
dollars their opinion would be like wow that was ridiculous like why did you spend so much money
and then make them make them afraid of making an offer because if you're expecting to make
that much money back they may not feel like you even even though they're maybe the best
option for you they may feel conservatively that they're not going to make that much money for you
on the flip side if they're if they're wowed by it it doesn't I don't think it really makes
much difference from them unless they're the kind of company that
is in the business of making films themselves and are looking at you as a potential
filmmaker to invest in in the future and there are very few Distributors actually most distributors
don't do that most servers are just Distributors and so they don't really the budget just doesn't
really matter to them but it might matter to some some Distributors that that actually make movies
well it's interesting because it seems like with Hollywood we know
their budget and it's out there in the trades whereas with independent
filmmakers we're almost supposed to hide ours like in a shameful way
Yes, I usually just take the position of not being hiding it for shame. I just like
why does it make any difference right like unless you made it for ten thousand dollars
and it looks like half a million and you want to brag about it and make that kind of part of
your pitch that look how great we are, we could make something short but not I don't
find most Hollywood cares about that or and I think that story's been played right we had
Robert Rodriguez and a couple of others that have like wow this film was made for nothing
and now people tons of people make films for nothing every day someone made a film for
almost nothing so it's no longer really a badge of honor it's just another fact
and not a very sexy one way or the other I don't think so I tend to sell people that's just not
they're not going to ask us so let's not put it out there this way the way I see it I think
it's irrelevant like look at the quality of the film if you want it pay the right price for it
but why is it different for Hollywood why are we okay knowing the this many million
was spent on this film well there again I'm not depending on the Hollywood film because there's
different there's Studio level and then there's things that are kind of made with International
sales agents that pop up to Studio level and so there's different kinds of Studio films
I'm not sure we're getting the accurate budget from from these people even though they're public
sometimes so I think there's been a number of times and the number got out that a
production spent and it was so much that it had a negative impact on people viewing the film,
probably would have failed anyway, but there's a few out there that spent 200 million and be people
were like wow that that they shouldn't have done that all right so yeah Ishtar, Johnny Depp Native
American Film played Tonto (Lone Ranger), there are a few examples out there of how it negatively
impacted the the publicity so I think some of the some of the numbers you see about Hollywood
production stuff out there is guessing really guesswork and getting some info information
but that they're not necessarily publishing every budget for everybody to see I don't think that's
that's really happening can you give us the ranges of how much movies make on various platforms
well I can tell you from kind of a true Indie perspective right because I work on
a mostly true indie films not made in Hollywood not made with International
sales agents not made with Kevin Bacon in it, those are the films I mostly work on.
I see the range of Revenue coming off of transactional VOD
which is rental and buying on iTunes and Amazon and the various cable TV platforms
straight to digital no theatrical the range is kind of zero almost zero to 150 000 about in that
range with the median being much closer to zero and the outliers at the 150 range so it's not
like the average is 75. the average is the media the median is more like 20,000 I'd say 30,000 for
most most films and sorry to interrupt this is for the life of the term of the contract correct okay
and most of that Revenue coming in within the first two years and then just dropping
the next window they go to then of course is s voter TV sales and the range there is
not making that deal so there's zero coming in off of that window
to a couple hundred thousand dollars with most films not getting that deal that's
probably the the most likely case to some films getting 40 to 20 to 60 in that range
and then AVOD is a growing sorry advertising video on demand which is to be in Pluto where they're
paying royalty people are watching because and watching advertisement rather than subscribing
or paying for it those platforms are paying 10 to 15 cents per view and the revenues on there are
again kind of zero to 150,000 in that range as well and growing because it's it's a growing
part of the business because a lot of people don't want to pay there's a lot of people who
don't have money to subscribe to 10 platforms let alone one and don't want to rent movies but watch
a lot of stuff in that in that in that ecosystem now so it's a growing growing place for films to
make money and you can't skip those ads correct they're not skipping that's right that's right
and they come up in weird awful places right as well it's not the best view to experience and you
said 15 cents per is it per view it's purview what if they if they watch a decent amount of the film
I think it's if they watch most of the movie then the royalty paid out is can be 15 cents per view
which is a lot better than what Amazon Prime went down to which is one cent per view
so that's been but we don't know where that's going to go because there are more there are
many more AVOD platforms out there lots of Distributors are creating their own AVOD
platforms advertising video on demand platforms and and it just depends the 2B was bought by Fox
and the way these things go you just never know what they're going to do with the platform do
they keep it being a place where Distributors can put all their stuff or do they eventually turn
into something else like Netflix at one point was the place where you watched all the movies
you ever could right like it had every movie now you go to watch Netflix content on Netflix
mostly so so we'll see is that purview per like IP address if the same user is
watching things over and over again it can still generate money yeah I'm not sure about
that I imagine that the system probably has safeguards against people creating
algorithms so that they just can just like play a film over and over again and make it money
right I'm sure that they have safeguards against that but I don't know for sure.