Below The Line

There’s a tendency in this business to treat labor deals as background noise—important, but ultimately someone else’s problem. Writers get paid more, studios pay more, and everyone else carries on. That’s not what just happened. The new agreement between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is not just an incremental update. It’s a structural adjustment to how content is valued in the streaming era. And while the full downst

The new WGA/AMPTP deal is being framed as a win for writers—and it is. But for indie producers, it quietly changes the math in ways that haven’t fully hit the market yet. Over the next 60 days, those changes are going to start showing up in what gets bought, how deals are structured, and who ends up carrying the risk when a film actually performs. In this piece, we’re going to break down what’s coming—and how to position your projects so you’re not on the wrong side of it. Th

There’s a version of this conversation where every filmmaker thinks they got screwed. And sometimes they did. But more often than not, what actually happened is something far less comfortable: they walked into a deal they didn’t fully understand, pushed for terms that didn’t make sense, and then blamed the outcome when the market didn’t behave the way they expected. The truth is, bad outcomes in sales agent relationships usually aren’t one-sided. There are absolutely sales ag

The New AI Workflow in Filmmaking (And Where You Fit In) There’s a version of this conversation where people pretend AI is just another tool. It’s not. What we’re watching right now is a fundamental restructuring of how films get made—from the first idea all the way through international distribution. And like every major technological shift this industry has seen, there are going to be clear winners, clear losers, and a very large group of people who realize too late which s

Most filmmakers think they’re being ignored because sales agents are too busy. That’s not what’s happening. Your email just didn’t make it past the first five seconds. Sales agents aren’t sitting around waiting for material — they’re filtering. Constantly. And the filter is brutal because it has to be. When you’re getting dozens (sometimes hundreds) of submissions a week, you’re not reading everything. You’re scanning for signals. Clear signals = an opened script. No signals

Let’s get this out of the way upfront: Starz is downsizing; that part is real. But if your immediate reaction is that this means fewer buyers, less money, and worse deals for independent film, you’re looking at it through an outdated lens. What’s happening inside Starz right now is more nuanced, and for a certain class of filmmaker, potentially very profitable. The Mistake Everyone Makes About Downsizing The mistake most people make when they hear “downsizing” is assuming it

The “Good Movie” Trap I see this all the time. A filmmaker sends me a movie, I sit down to watch it, and within the first twenty minutes I can tell: this is actually good. The performances are solid, the direction is competent, the cinematography is clean, and nothing is obviously broken. There’s no glaring issue that makes you want to turn it off. And yet, despite all of that, the movie doesn’t move. It doesn’t sell in any meaningful way, it doesn’t generate real revenue, an

Why So Many Indie Films Make Little Money — and Why the Distributor Is Usually the Last Person to Blame We’re going to do something unusual today. Something that tends to make filmmakers uncomfortable. We’re going to talk about real numbers — not hypothetical numbers, not festival-panel optimism, and not the magical “seven-figure projections” that somehow appear whenever low-budget producers are pitching investors. Actual revenue numbers. Before anyone panics, these numbers c

If there’s one mistake filmmakers consistently make when evaluating distribution offers, it’s assuming that the deal itself is the most important part of the equation. It isn’t. The contract matters, of course. Minimum guarantees matter. Marketing commitments matter. But none of those things determine the ultimate performance of your film nearly as much as where your distributor can actually place your movie once the deal is signed. Distribution has always been about access.

Why Roku, Tubi, Pluto and the expanding ad-supported ecosystem may quietly be stabilizing the economics of independent film If you’re a filmmaker with a movie that has already sold or is currently in distribution, there’s a good chance you’ve started noticing something in your quarterly statements: Roku. More and more AVOD revenue is now being driven through Roku placements, Roku-delivered advertising, or The Roku Channel itself. It’s showing up in statements and reporting in

There is a very specific moment every filmmaker experiences. The screening ends. The meeting goes well. The buyer smiles. They compliment the film. They tell you the performances were strong. They say the cinematography looked great. And then comes the sentence: “We like it… but we can’t do anything with it.” Filmmakers walk away confused. Sometimes frustrated. Occasionally convinced the buyer “just didn’t get it.” But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Buyers almost never say w

Every market cycle creates a myth. Right now, the myth is that buyers have disappeared. You hear it in hallways. You see it in filmmaker group chats. You feel it in the tone of decks that suddenly sound defensive instead of confident. The narrative is simple: streamers pulled back, broadcasters tightened budgets, and the independent marketplace shrank to the point where selling films has become nearly impossible. It’s a comforting explanation. It’s also incomplete. Because wh

Debt is seductive. It moves faster than equity. It doesn’t dilute ownership. It makes your film feel real because suddenly you have actual money hitting an account instead of promises floating in the ether. And that’s exactly why it can quietly destroy your project if you don’t understand what you’re doing. Debt financing in film is neither good nor bad. It’s leverage. And leverage magnifies whatever already exists — competence, incompetence, momentum, chaos. The same instrum

Since vertical microdramas popped into the zeitgeist there have been plenty of naysayers and shit talkers – myself included most likely. These things are not out to win awards, break careers, or tell stories that matter. But since 2025 when the numbers reported were eclipsing the US domestic box office, it feels like the whole industry started buzzing with questions: What the hell are  verticals? Are they here to stay? What about the unions? Should I care?  Admittedly, I was

Money Is Moving Again — But The Rules Have Changed Berlin always opens with optimism. It’s the first market of the year. Buyers arrive with budgets reset. Producers arrive with fresh decks and fresh hope. Sales agents arrive with coffee, spreadsheets, and the quiet understanding that most of those decks are built on outdated assumptions. After Day 1 of the European Film Market, one thing is clear: The money is back in circulation internationally. But urgency is not. That dist

Let me start with a painful truth that most filmmakers don’t want to hear: Your royalties are not determined when your movie premieres. And for you smaller indies out there, you can't rely exclusively on your distributor to market your film -- you need to roll up your sleeves, because making the movie was about 70% of the work. When this is done correctly, your small MG will pale in comparison to the overages earned over time. When done incorrectly, that MG may be all the mon

There’s a version of the Iron Lung  story that Hollywood will tel l itself. It wi ll say:“ That only worked because Markiplier already had 38 million subscribers.” That interpretation is comfortable. It protects the old system. It allows studios, distributors, and even filmmakers to dismiss what just happened as a statistical outlier. But if you’re paying attention — really paying attention — Iron Lung  may be one of the most important independent distribution case studies

If you’ve been listening to the noise, you’d think North American indie distribution has turned into a graveyard. Fewer real buyers. Smaller MGs. Studio-level companies tightening mandates. Middle-tier films getting squeezed. Lower-tier films ignored entirely. Some of that is true — but it’s not the whole story. What’s actually happening is a reallocation of leverage . And the people quietly benefiting from it are not the legacy studio buyers everyone’s been chasing for the p

If you only read headlines, you’d think the international indie market is either dead  or *about to be saved by AI, FAST, or whatever platform launched last Tuesday. Neither is true. What is  true is this. The international marketplace didn’t disappear — it fragmented, and the people still making money are the ones who understand where volume lives , where price lives , and how to cast surgically instead of emotionally . And as we discussed in December, films operating on the

Let’s clear something up right away: Money is not scarce right now. Prepared filmmakers are. As of early 2026, private investors—especially doctors, dentists, real-estate developers, and successful entrepreneurs—are doing just fine. Many of them want  to invest in films. Not because movies are the best place to park capital (they aren’t), but because film sits at the intersection of logic and fantasy in a way few asset classes do. Your job isn’t to convince them movies are sa