profit potential of an indie feature?

gi-jones said:
No. An indie production takes so much time and effort that I would NEVER do it unless I absolutely felt I that I was making a great film. Even so, considering the original intent in this thread, I think it would be pretty interesting to hear what other people have done and suceeded, instead of the usual droning on about what NOT to do. I know a lot about what NOT to do - cause I did a lot of it.

Also I'm here mainly out of curiosity, as I try to make my way through a very different market than you guys.

But thanks for the sarcasm.
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If your in a different market then there might be more hope, what type of market?
 
I'm in Denmark, which is 5 million people speaking their own language. Kind of limiting, as you guys in general don't really appreciate subtitles that much (no offense) :-)
 
Yea, I'd research the indie scene there. I made a post about using 2 casts for one movie, an american cast then have a jappenese speaking cast come in and redo the same scene then market that film to Japan. I didn;t get much of a response but would think it would only at 20-30% more shooting days.
 
Well, I think it's hard enough to produce ONE film. Doing two at once would probably kill me :-)

But I have been thinking that someday I would like to do a feature in english. Hence my interest i US distribution.
 
Shooting identical films was done in Hollywood for a while. At qt4, I watched a Spanish language print of Dracula (if not mistaken). At night they would send Bella Lugusi home and bring in a Spanish language cast and a new director and shoot on the same sets. I liked the Spanish version better.
 
I'm a little late to the party on this thread, but thought I'd offer some thoughts. I've been in distribution primarily in the U.S. video market for 20 years and have released over 80 features in all genres. One way to look at total sales figure potential is to look at what specific markets can pay out. Blockbuster is getting more difficult to sell to, and the numbers are lower, but a movie that can get say 2 copies per store over the 4000 or so stores, and do similar at Hollywood Video is on track to gross about $75-100k. Depending on the genre there could be some more money to be made in VOD, say $25-50k, generally speaking. Will the film work for foreign markets, which have contracted seriously over past few years. Maybe you can pull $50k out of those. So, if you make an Ok deal with a distributor, you could probably come out with your $100k. It helps to have some soft money tax incentive advantages, and maybe some names in secondary positions in the film to spur interest. However, I don't see any $100k comedies or dramas achieving this for the most part.
 
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