) but in the podcast the distributor made the mistake of saying that even a small movie can make over a million dollars in sales. So these distributors can do well with small under $100K features.Thought I'd chime in here as a prodcuer and distributor. I've been in distribution since getting ripped off on my foreign on a film in 1991 by Green Communications. Took awhile to get it going and certainly made it impossible to make movies anymore. Finally started getting into Blockbuster, Hollywood etc and was doing fairly well. At the time Doug Schwab of Maverick was my buyer at Blockbuster before starting Maverick. Believe the small companies are not making uber bank on the little films. Where would they be selling to? You can get an idea of what is made by checking out the shelves at Blockbuster and seeing how many copies a film has and extrapolating that over the 3-4000 stores they'll have after closing another 1000 this year. With urban films or specialty the depth of copy may not be across the board at their other stores. So or example some horror film has 3 copies and that goes across the chain or 4000 stores for a total of 12,000 at best. They'll likely be getting between $6-8 per dvd so after duplication, shipping, graphics, printing they'll gross maybe $60k or so. Back when vhs were selling for $60 or more it was a different story. So making much more than $100k on these films with small distributors isn't happening very often. If it was such a rich market you wouldn't have seen so many distributors fail over the years. We have a new release coming out that was shot on 35mm starring C. Thomas Howell called Dead Letters. Hoping others will queue it at Netflix to get our order up. If you have any questions about distribution I'd be happy to try and answer them. Steve Lustgarten. leofilms.com on Twitter @lustgarten.The commecial looks great to me. In fact there may be benefits to shooting with the EX1 vs the Canon 5D/7D that you may not be paying much attention to especially when it comes to grain the in the blacks. My wife owns a Canon 5D MK2 right now (photographer) but I'm doing my best to get to a EX1 and SGBlade after doing a few tests with the 5D. The 5D is not bad, don't get me wrong, and if I have to shoot with it myself I will. But a lot can be argued about the camera that would cause this thread to quickly get off topic. But if you have an EX1 or access to one, I would suggest you do a lot of tests.
Anyway, as for Coming Correct next week we go to our first film festival. I plan to go and check out what opportunities are there. Hopefully we'll get into more fests and maybe get a possible buyer. I'd rather go that route than try to go direct to Maverick, although it's always a possibility. A few years ago a small feature called Sombodies was made outside of Atlanta. It went to Sundance I think, and although it didn't get distribution, the director picked up an agent who believed in him and got him a TV show based on the Movie. The TV show only lasted 1 season, but you get my point. Agents and distributors come to fests because they want to see someone who can make them some money. So we're just hoping for something that will work out for us and propel us forward. So when you make your movie, just do your best to make the bext movie you can then try a few avenues to see if you can get a great deal. I will tell you that if you can convince a named actor to be in your movie, then it'll be easier for you to sell. Even if you use 50% of your budget on that one actor, it can be worth it in the long run.
Also on the festival concept, recognize that festivals can be political as well. Not all fests, are looking for "up and coming talent" many are simply trying to fill seats. So if your feature has you and your buddies then it may not be thought of as a crowd pleaser, as "not fill seats". But since you're going action, if your action sequences are great then you can probably use that as your "celebrity".
Remember York and Maverick split up years ago. You are correct, York does have a bad reputation of not paying, but Maverick does have a reputation of paying - they just don't pay that much.
Also be warned that neither one of these companies will show you their accounting, so you never know how much they have made off of you. I listened to a podcast about distribution recently (I don't know where so don't ask.
Needed to reach out to Kool Moe Dee and Doug E. Fresh for "Battle"...why didn't you suggest that to me before