Interview w/ Miranda Bailey: "The Industry Doesn't Want Dramas." And That's Only Part of the Problem.
The producer behind A24’s Swiss Army Man, Sony’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl and IFC’s God's Country explains why yesterday's bankable packages no longer work, what's really happening with distributors and Pay-1 deals, and where she sees the next opportunity for independent filmmakers.
When I asked producer Miranda Bailey whether she could finance Swiss Army Man today with the same script, directors and cast that got it made a decade ago, her answer was immediate.
"No."
She didn't need to think about it. Even with Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano attached, Bailey doesn't believe the same $3 million package would come together in today's market.
That's a remarkable statement considering what the film represented when it was made. Swiss Army Man was the feature debut of The Daniels, the filmmaking duo who would go on to make Everything Everywhere All at Once. It had two recognizable actors, an unmistakably original concept, and a producer who understood how to match an unconventional project with a commercially defensible budget.
A decade ago, that combination worked. Today, Bailey believes the risk appetite that made it possible has largely disappeared.
And after spending more than an hour talking with her about financing, international sales, distribution, streaming, production budgets and emerging platforms, I came away with a picture of an independent film business that's considerably more complicated than the familiar narrative that nobody is buying movies anymore.
Bailey is not simply a producer frustrated by a difficult marketplace. She has financed independent films, helped discover some of the industry's most distinctive filmmakers, co-founded distribution company The Film Arcade, and spent years dealing with the financial consequences of decisions made on both sides of the distribution agreement.
She has also developed some very strong opinions about what producers are getting wrong.
The Producer Who Said Yes to the Weird Movies
Bailey has an unusual track record of identifying filmmakers before they become household names.
Her credits include work with Noah Baumbach on The Squid and the Whale, James Gunn on Super, Marielle Heller on The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and the Daniels on Swiss Army Man. She has also produced films including Don't Think Twice, God's Country and the more recent By Design.
I wanted to know whether there was a common denominator among those filmmakers, or whether she'd simply been fortunate enough to find herself attached to a remarkable collection of projects.
Bailey acknowledged that luck played a part, but said the underlying attraction was originality.
"There is a taste involved," she told me. The filmmakers she gravitates toward have a recognizable voice and a specific point of view, something that distinguishes their work from the countless other stories competing for attention.
That instinct was particularly important with Swiss Army Man.
Bailey was the first financing producer to say yes to the project. She recalled initially discussing a package of approximately $3 million, with her company contributing part of the financing and seeking partners for the balance.
The filmmakers' representatives subsequently explored whether they could use that interest to raise considerably more money elsewhere.
Bailey wasn't especially concerned.
"Good luck," she remembered thinking. "It's about a fucking corpse with a boner that's a compass."
She believed in the movie, but she also understood that the material's originality created a ceiling on what could reasonably be financed.
The casting process turned out to be almost as unusual as the screenplay.
Paul Dano was an early target because Bailey felt he could lend the project credibility as an independent film. Robert Pattinson initially expressed interest in playing the corpse, but the production required extensive physical rehearsal for sequences involving practical effects, and that became an obstacle.
Bailey then suggested Daniel Radcliffe, whom she'd seen in another film at Toronto and admired for his work outside the Harry Potter franchise.
When the producers contacted his representatives, they discovered that Radcliffe had recently sent his agent Daniels' music video for "Turn Down for What," expressing an interest in working with the filmmakers.
The timing was extraordinary.
Radcliffe came aboard, the remaining financing became considerably easier, and the film ultimately found its way to A24.
It's a terrific independent-film success story, but I was more interested in what the experience says about today's marketplace.
When I asked whether that same package could be financed now, Bailey explained that the problem wasn't simply the availability of money. She believes agents, distributors and other participants have become much more reluctant to take chances on unconventional material.
"I think that the agents of the actors don't want them taking risks. I think that distributors don't want to take risks."
She pointed to COVID, the strikes and uncertainty surrounding emerging technology as overlapping disruptions that prevented the business from recovering its previous footing.
But she also identified another problem that deserves more attention: the commercial value of an actor is increasingly dependent on where that actor is appearing. Bailey argued that performers who have built substantial audiences through Netflix, Apple, Amazon or other streaming platforms don't necessarily carry equivalent value everywhere else. A trend we have likewise seen at S&R.
An actor can be extremely recognizable to the audience of a successful streaming series without being able to independently support a theatrical release or justify the same level of investment in an unrelated feature.
That's an important distinction for producers who still assume that recognition automatically translates into bankability.
The question is no longer simply whether an actor has an audience. It's whether that audience will follow the actor to a different movie, a different platform and a different transaction.
And according to Bailey, the market is becoming much less forgiving when producers get that calculation wrong.
The Sundance Sale Producers Can No Longer Count On
Bailey believes another traditional independent-film financing assumption has become particularly dangerous: making a movie with the expectation that a major festival premiere will produce a substantial acquisition.
She described the old model of completing a film, premiering at Sundance or Toronto, and attracting seven-figure offers as something producers can no longer reasonably build their financing plans around.
In her assessment, the percentage of festival titles achieving meaningful sales has fallen dramatically from earlier periods. She offered a rough comparison of a market where perhaps 30% of films could sell to one where she believes the figure may be closer to 10%, with many transactions falling short of seven figures.
Those are Bailey's estimates, not independently verified festival statistics. But the underlying warning is one I think every producer financing an independent film on speculation should take seriously.
A festival premiere is an opportunity to create value, not a reliable source of repayment.
Bailey also questioned how much producers should read into acquisition announcements.
Some films announced as festival acquisitions, she observed, may already have distribution arrangements, presales or other financial commitments in place before their premieres.
That means the apparent success of a festival sale can be misleading to another producer attempting to finance a completely independent movie without those protections.
I raised recent comments from agency representatives suggesting that distributors are becoming hungrier for films and that the market may be suffering from a shortage of quality product. Bailey wasn't persuaded.
"That's bullshit," she said.
Her disagreement wasn't that distributors have no interest in acquiring films. It was that buyer demand, by itself, doesn't solve the financing problems preventing many distributors from making meaningful offers.
She identified a specific missing piece of the business model that helps explain why.
And it may be one of the most important observations from our entire conversation.
🔓 SUBSCRIBER CONTENT
Miranda Bailey believes the revenue streams that once supported meaningful MGs are disappearing. But new opportunities could open entirely new sources of revenue for independent films and their distributors.
Drawing on decades of experience, Bailey reveals how to finance smarter, budget for today's market, protect your profits, and capitalize on what's coming next.
Continue Reading to Learn About:
How to make your next film easier to finance: What's changed in distributor valuations—and how to build a package that today's buyers can actually support.
The budget decisions that can make or break profitability: How Bailey financed films for a fraction of their expected cost, and what producers should reconsider before locking their budgets.
The missing money behind today's MGs: Why some distributors can't offer the guarantees they once did—and what that means for your financing strategy.
The presale mistake that can put investor recoupment at risk: What happened to Super and what producers should examine before counting international commitments as secured revenue.
How to negotiate a more profitable distribution deal: When a smaller MG may actually work against you, and which expense provisions can quietly erode your backend.
A potential new revenue stream hiding in your film library: What Bailey is doing with vertical platforms and how producers might unlock additional value from existing content.
These aren't theoretical concerns. Bailey has been on both sides of the distribution relationship, and her experience offers an unusually candid look at the decisions that can determine whether an independent movie returns its investment.
Before you build your next financing plan around projected sales, understand which parts of that revenue model still work—and which may no longer exist.
