Commercial Distribution (Direct To DVD/Video)

K

Kevin McCallister

Well-known member
Has anyone had any experience/success in selling a piece of their work to a distribution company (big or small)?

What triggered this question is the enormous glut of no-name low budget horror movies that I see peppering the shelves of the local Blockbuster when I walk through the store. Clearly, there must be a market for distribution of this type of low budget entertainment. I'm curious to know if any of you guys have had dealings with a distribution company, and what it was like, what kind of contract they offered, if they retain the rights to your film, etc?

I remember reading Robert Rodiguez's book about "El Mariachi", and how several spanish video distributors offered him around $25,000 for the film. Is this a normal rate?

Any information or tidbits anyone has on the world of post-production distribution would be greatly valued and appreciated.

Cheers.
 
No spanish distributers offered him $25,000. His PLAN was to make it for $7000 and sell it to a Spanish distributor for $25,000 but he never got there -- instead Columbia picked it up.

The short answer is: little distributors will get in with Blockbuster and open up their little catalogs. And the people who made those little films will get robbed blind. You would be extremely lucky to ever see $5,000 or $10,000 over the entire life of one of those films. Most filmmakers never see a dime from those deals. Blockbuster will make their money, and so will the distributor, but the filmmaker won't.

The filmmaker gets the "bragging rights" of saying "I got my film in Blockbuster!" But that's all they get, is bragging rights! That, and a lifetime of credit card debt. Unless they're crafty enough to leverage that "my film is in blockbuster" calling card into a second, bigger-picture deal.

If you want to make money making small films, the only way to do it is to distribute the films yourself. That way you keep 100% of the revenues, instead of 0% as happens with "distributors".
 
And, continuing from Barry's...

You could even "distribute" them yourself by going out-of-pocket for the shortest run available from a pro DVD presser, then sell them through the Amazon Advantage program, or similar, if not just sell them off your own website. (I'd go through Amazon...let them do the hard part and take their cut. It's 55%, but what the heck.)

If the short run sells well enough, you could then go ahead and do a larger run.

Dan
 
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