Wow, have I been naive about the film finance structure and also the way that movies progress from the script phase to distribution.

Sometimes, it feels like the financing challenges are this steep cliff that simply isn’t possible to climb. But that’s a feeling. I know that notion is wrong because I’ve worked on a team that successfully financed a feature film in the past. But it’s easy to get demoralized or discouraged. 

Rather that allow those negative emotions to take over, I’ve taken the hard facts learned about film finance and development hell and developed some brief tutorials, so that (hopefully) you can learn from my mistakes and misunderstandings of the past.

In particular, I’ve set out to explain exactly what a “waterfall” looks like as revenues flow from the distributors to the creatives holding net profit participation points. 

Admittedly, I’m nostalgic for the early 2000s before “development hell” got even more hellish. At the risk of being overly negative, I explain why the previous system was better for creatives than the system we have now. Still, it’s not impossible to bring together the right elements for your film, but you have to be willing to see how the sausages are made. And most creatives don’t want to know how they sausages are made. They just want to receive a call that they’re wanted or needed for a project.

So…for explaining how the sausages are made, I apologize in advance for ruining anyone’s blissful ignorance.