FilmQuest has awarded its top prizes to the last three short films that subsequently won Oscars and now receives 3,000 submissions a year. Founder Jonathan Martin believes that gives the festival something buyers increasingly need: a way to find commercially viable genre movies before they disappear into the noise of the traditional market. This week I sat down with the founder of FilmQuest, and there is one statistic about FilmQuest that probably deserves to come before anyt

Forget the politics for a minute. If Congress gets this right, a federal production incentive could make more independent films financeable—and make shooting overseas considerably less attractive. President Trump has called on Congress to create a federal incentive for film and television production, throwing his support behind an idea the industry has been quietly pushing for some time. The effort has support from an unusual coalition that includes the Motion Picture Associa

Brainstorm Media CEO Michelle Shwarzstein on what audiences still want, where acquisition prices are landing, why cast has to match genre, how TVOD can create downstream leverage, and how smart producers can still make the economics work. There is plenty to be pessimistic about in independent film right now, and if you’ve been reading BTL for any length of time, you already know I’m not interested in pretending otherwise. Pay-1 has contracted, buyers are cautious, audiences h

The independent film market hasn’t stopped buying movies. It has become much less forgiving about what it buys—and what it pays. I hear some version of the same filmmaker complaint constantly: “buyers don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” A filmmaker makes what they believe is a genuinely good movie, sends it into the marketplace and gets back silence, passes or an offer that feels insulting. The natural conclusion is that acquisitions executives have become overly conserv

This is a companion piece to "Amazon Is Rebuilding Cable—and Right Now, That’s Great for Indie Film," so read that first. There are more than 100 subscriptions available through Prime Video Channels, but most of them are irrelevant to an independent feature producer. What matters is identifying the services that actually acquire or program films like yours—and understanding that the economics can vary enormously even within the same release window. The ranges below are not pu

Prime Video Channels is creating new Pay-1 buyers, new licensing revenue and even second lives for movies whose transactional business was supposedly over. Independent filmmakers should take advantage of it now—and be very careful about assuming it will last. For most of the last decade, independent filmmakers have thought about Amazon in fairly simple terms. Amazon was where your movie rented or sold. Maybe it landed on Prime. Maybe it disappeared into AVOD. Maybe the royalt

Most producers spend their time perfecting the pitch. The better question is whether you understand what the person across the table is actually buying. I've watched producers spend months trying to get in front of potential film investors and then completely misread them once they finally get the meeting. They arrive with the deck polished, the budget ready, the comps carefully selected and the financial projections formatted to within an inch of their lives. Then they proce

Before blaming the movie, take a hard look at everything surrounding it. One of the most frustrating calls I get from filmmakers usually starts with some version of the same question: "Why isn't anybody buying my movie?" Sometimes the answer really is the movie. It isn't good enough, the pacing doesn't work, the genre is difficult, or the audience simply isn't there. Nobody likes hearing that, but it happens. Increasingly, though, I think filmmakers are too quick to blame the

TIFF launches its first official marketplace in September. What I'm hearing from other buyers and sales agents suggests this could be much more than another stop on the calendar—and filmmakers need to prepare accordingly. For decades, the Toronto International Film Festival has been one of the most important unofficial film markets in the world. Deals happened everywhere. Hotel suites became sales offices. Buyers bounced between screenings and meetings. Sales agents worked ou

What a two-hour conversation with Radial Entertainment's SVP Acquisitions & Orignals, Jordan Fields, reveals about how sophisticated distributors really evaluate independent films. Most filmmakers think buyers are looking for great movies. That's only partially true. After spending more than two hours speaking with Jordan Fields, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Originals at Radial Entertainment, I came away convinced that many filmmakers are asking the wrong question.

The most expensive mistakes in independent film usually aren't made during production. They're made before the first dollar is ever spent. Every independent film begins the same way: a script, a budget, a dream and a belief that everything else will fall into place. Sometimes it does. More often, producers spend months—or years—building a project before asking the one question that matters most: Does this movie make business sense in today's marketplace? That's a dangerous wa

What the world's largest streamer can teach filmmakers about pacing, audience gravity, and why "good" isn't good enough anymore. "My movie is just as good as what's already on Netflix." I have heard some version of that sentence hundreds of times over the years. Sometimes it is said confidently, and sometimes it is delivered with the frustration of someone who believes the platform has made an obvious mistake. My response is usually another question: Says who? The filmmaker'

The budget should not tell you what the movie costs. It should tell you whether the movie makes financial sense. A producer sends me a screenplay and tells me the film will cost $3 million. Before discussing the cast, genre or sales potential, I usually ask one question: How did you arrive at $3 million? The answer is often some version of the same story. A line producer read the script, estimated the shooting schedule, priced the locations, added the crew, equipment, post-pr

Why the market rewards clarity—and why trying to be everything to everyone often leaves you with no audience at all. One of the first questions I ask a filmmaker before I watch their movie is deceptively simple. "What genre is it?" You'd be surprised how often the answer begins with a pause. "Well... it's kind of an action thriller with dramatic elements." "It's really a horror comedy." "It's a dramedy." "It's sort of a coming-of-age science fiction film." While I genuinely a

Every producer has heard some version of the same sentence: "But it's a great script." Sometimes it really is. Sometimes it's one of the best screenplays I've read all year. And yet, I and others still pass. That doesn't mean the screenplay isn't exceptional. It means I'm asking a different question than most writers assume. A screenplay doesn't sell because it's well written. It sells because someone can see a path to selling the finished film. That distinction has become mo

If you had asked me a year ago whether the international market for independent films was in trouble, I wouldn't have hesitated. It was. Many buyers had effectively stepped away from acquiring low and mid-tier independent films altogether. Others were still buying, but only for nominal minimum guarantees that were difficult to justify. Deals that had once been routine suddenly became nearly impossible to close, and producers began asking whether international sales still had

Or Are They? More than once over the few months I've watched a financing discussion begin with a map rather than a cast list. It wouldn’t have worked five to ten years ago, but today there are absolutely movies getting greenlit as a result of location and the new ecosystems that have been stemming up. If you had asked an independent producer fifteen years ago how they intended to package a film, most would have described a fairly familiar process. First came the screenplay, t

Every filmmaker wants to know the same thing. "What are buyers actually looking for?" I've been asked that question hundreds of times over the years, and it's usually followed by a list of assumptions. People think buyers are looking for originality. They think buyers are looking for great performances. They think buyers are looking for award potential, artistic vision, or emotional impact. Those things certainly matter, but not in the order most filmmakers imagine. And what

Google’s reported investment in A24 is not really about A24. At least, not entirely. Yes, the headlines are easy to understand. Google DeepMind is partnering with one of the most respected independent studios in the world. The reported investment is around $75 million. The stated purpose is to develop AI tools that support filmmakers and creative professionals. On the surface, that sounds like another tech company trying to plant a flag in Hollywood during the AI gold rush. B