Word: film
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Mark Gill, who served as president of Warner Independent Pictures and Miramax/LA and is now CEO of the indie-film production and financing company the Film Department, estimates that of the 38 indie-film financing firms - the so-called front end - that existed in 2007, only 11 remain. And they are mostly sitting on their hands. While Wall Street investment in independent movies totaled more than $2 billion from 2005 to 2007, according to Deutsche Bank, it has plummeted to practically nothing since then. (See TIME's audio slide show "85 Years of Warner Bros. Movies...
...rough on the back end. Small distributors like ThinkFilm, which released the popular documentaries The Aristocrats, Born into Brothels and Murderball, are struggling, while financially stronger studios - the Hollywood heavies - are scaling back. Just two years ago, each of the six major studios had at least one specialty film division that bought indie films at events like the Toronto International (TIFF) and Sundance festivals, arranged for them to be shown at movie theaters and marketed them to the public. Today only Twentieth Century Fox, Sony and Universal still have specialty divisions - Disney does, too, but in name only. Paramount closed...
...important were those specialty arms? In 2007, they accounted for more than 30% of indie box-office revenues. The big studios' specialty divisions were also key players in film-festival bidding wars, often paying between $2 million and $10 million per film. This year the highest price paid for a film at the Toronto festival was $1 million by the Weinstein Co. for Tom Ford's A Single Man. "Indie Bloodbath" was how influential movie-industry blogger Anne Thompson described the dearth of high-priced sales at the festival. (See how to plan for retirement...
While Toronto festival co-director Cameron Bailey is optimistic that by year's end money spent to acquire 2009 TIFF films will be comparable to that of prior years, others say he's dreaming. "Usually there would be one film that came close to a double-digit million-dollar sale, if not hitting that," says Ted Hope, a 20-year veteran indie-film producer whose credits include 21 Grams and The Ice Storm. "Then you would have four or five films in that $4-to-$6 million range and four to seven films in that $1-to-$3 million range...
...fundamental ways. Just look at the way indie filmmakers raise money today. In the past, they would "presell" their movie to foreign distributors, using not much more than a script and a cast list. That meant certain funding for the filmmaker no matter how good or bad the film turned out to be. The filmmaker could then go to a private investor who, knowing that the movie was already presold to foreign territories, would view it as less risky and invest. With money from both foreign rights and private investors, the filmmaker could then secure a bank loan...