Choose Your Own Blog

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

July 27th, 2002: Offers

Hey, look! Really bad pre-photoshop(I used Corel Photopaint) poster mock-up.  

Last week we got an offer from IFM Film Associates. It boils down to a percentage deal on all sales, but they’re kind of like a middle-man. I check another filmmaker who used them, and he tells me they have yet to make a dime after the advance.

    Which is weird, because IFM claims they’ve done about $150,000 in sales, so I don’t know what kind of expenses they’re claiming.

    And oh, IFM claims they’re “marginally less enthusiastic about this title, as opposed to [another movie they name] because it has a much grittier look and is less clearly generic.” That’s right, our movie is too original.

    Gonna turn that one down.

    Then tonight Paul at Tulchin’s emails me that we have a new offer from Spartan Video, a buyout offer. They want the US rights for $30,000. We’ll still be able to sell cable/TV rights and foreign. It’s a low offer, but it’s money up front, which is what I’m looking for. That back-end money is for shit when you can’t trust any of these companies.

    So now I have to figure if it’s a good idea. It’s more than the entire budget of our movie, but not as high as we wanted. If I’m confident that Spartan can get the movie into Blockbuster and Hollywood Video though, I may go with them anyway. Time to get some money and move on.

Friday, June 4, 2010

MAY-JUNE 2002

Man, it's like foreshadowing! I name Lion's Gate as a possible distributor, and they end up picking up my next movie(which is also mentioned in this same entry).

Ransom is still a script I like a lot. But it's really not that marketable without a real cast.

MAY – JUNE

    Did the press kits. They turned out pretty nice, but cost about $450. I send twenty-five of the fifty I’ve made, plus screeners to Tulchin. Two weeks later he emailed me a list of the distributors he sent them out to. Some of the names are Universal, Warner Bros, HBO, Showtime.

    I wonder if Harris has even seen the movie. Ain’t no way this is a big-studio movie. I’m thinking more like Fine Line(who is also on the list) and Lion’s Gate.

    Harris lets me know he needs more screeners. I email him and say I’ll send him another fifteen, but that these things aren’t M&M’s and these are the last ones I can send to him for a while.

    In retrospect, I wish I’d had the press kits when I sent out screeners to the festivals we applied to. Would have made a better impression on the judges.

    Anyway, I can now sit back and hopefully wait for the offers to pour in. I’ve finished Ransom For A Psychopath, one of the scripts I was thinking about shooting, but it would cost too much money. Still aiming at Fear Of Clowns. Got about 90 pages done, still working out some kinks.