So, you wanna be in pictures?
It happens every year. An independent film made for next to nothing creates a frenzy at the Sundance Film Festival, goes on to earn millions at the box office, and turns a small investment into an ATM. It's enough to make even levelheaded investors think they ought to be in pictures.
For some investors, just the chance of latching on to another Blair Witch Project, an indie phenom that cost $50,000 to make and earned more than $300 million, or being involved with a project they "really believe in" is simply too tempting to pass up. To say nothing of the possibility of sashaying down the red carpet, hobnobbing with movie stars, and earning an "executive producer" credit for all your friends to see.
For all its big-scale, Miramax-style success, the indie film industry would be lost without these folks. With the economy still regaining its footing, raising money for films has never been so difficult. "Fewer and fewer people are willing to lose real money these days," says Larry Meistrich, who founded the Shooting Gallery ( Sling Blade, You Can Count on Me ) and is now CEO of Film Movement, a new subscription service for first-run independent films. It's easy to understand why. Even at the big studios like Disney, which owns Miramax, and Universal, profits rarely top 10 percent, and most independent films can only dream of that. Of the thousands of small movies that get made each year, only a couple of hundred ever see the light of day and fewer than 10 percent of those ever make a dime.
Nothing earned. Although DVD sales, the Internet, and cable channels like Sundance, which has 21 million subscribers, have all helped boost the popularity and profitability of small movies, they're still a dicey financial investment. "If you have some other motivation, we try to make it as close to a reasonable investment as possible," says John Sloss, a partner in Cinetic Media, a film financing firm that is behind such low-budget hits as Napoleon Dynamite and Super Size Me . Sloss is among a growing number of independent producers who are trying to attract serious investors by building more stability and predictability into a business that is inherently unpredictable. "You've got to go into this prepared to go home with nothing," says Sloss. Still, there are ways for investors to hedge their bets, if only slightly, by taking into account the factors over which filmmakers do have some control.
Nothing, for instance, is as critical to the success of a movie as the script. Surprisingly, say producers, many investors do not read them. "Although you may not recognize a good script, you can usually spot a bad one," says Robert May, president of SenArt Films, the independent production company behind The Station Agent and the documentary Fog of War . "A great script can still end up as a bad movie, but a bad script will never become a good movie." To be commercially viable, a story has to be able to connect with an audience. Stories about love, like My Big Fat Greek Wedding , which has earned more than $400 million, or about the triumph of the underdog, like Napoleon Dynamite , which was made for $400,000 and has earned more than $50 million so far, are universal themes. Documentaries ( Fahrenheit 9/11 notwithstanding) and highly controversial subjects are much riskier. The Woodsman , a recent release, for instance, stars Kevin Bacon as a pedophile trying to return to society. Although critically acclaimed, it has been playing to very small crowds.
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