Screenwriting : A paradox at AFM? by Phil Parker

I have heard this before. At one point in time Cuba Gooding Jr could get arrested in the USA. But he was still a hot property in Europe. So if you had AFM presale figures for Cuba, you could get a budget.

I think people that believe the world stops at the California border may be shocked. The rest of us see opportunity.

Thanks for the link

Market bifurcation has been happening slowly for twenty years and Ted Hope has been trying to warn indie producers for about as long. The death of long-tail returns and widening of entertainment options was always going to be the starting point of the decline.

Schlock is surviving because the cost of production is going down along with the value. Providing you're very lean and highly commercial, you can hope to make your investor's money back in three years.

Streaming should be the saviour but, just like music, it rarely offers the incentives needed. Filmmakers are selling to Netflix for $750k on a $1m budget. Ouch!

The a very appealing USP or a whole new format is needed more than ever.

AFM can only do so much as can MIPCOM, Berlinale, etc. The good thing is people like Jonathan Wolf are fighting hard for the little guys and giving them frank advice such as using experienced agents to sell in foreign territories.

Preach, CJ! Preach!

C.J. - you're pretty much right. I first noticed the very beginning of this trend in the US during the mid/late '70s.

I was there for the first time this week and this phenomenon was very much a point of discussion. It seems that between the 250k films that are basically hoping for a TV sale (and perhaps foreign) and the big budget majors the middle is going away... fewer theatrical opportunities and they are not paying much in the in AVOD world... really has me back home wondering what to write next? Keep doing stuff that needs budgets of a few million or try and write something that can be shot under 250k...

The middle was lost years ago. $1.2m Lifetime movies are being made for $350k. I went to every AFM from 1986 to 2017, and quit when the distribs for backyard movies started popping up above the 4th floor.

This is why I'm moving into fiction ... :)

Serialized TV, y'all!

Doug, 1970s? VHS video market and Internet didn't exist. There were only 3 network TV channels in America then.

What caught my eye most in that article is the slate of films that were being snapped up - Hypnotic with Ben Affleck, Gerard Butler’s The Plane, Jason Statham thriller Cash Truck, Liam Neeson thriller Ice Road, Neill Blomkamp’s sci-fi pic Inferno, Jodie Foster drama Prisoner, road trip comedy Dog, starring and directed by Channing Tatum.

Those films are most likely in the $40-80m budget range, yes? That's the "middle" that I'm talking about. Those are the "middle-budget" movies, between the tent poles and the lower-budget indies, that many have been saying are a dying breed.

Or am I underestimating the budgets? THR reports Hypnotic at $60-80m, so I'm using that as a yardstick. Tatum's comedy would be half that at least, I reckon.

Phil may have spotted what I can only hope will be a trend - the comeback of the mid budget film. Looks like a lot of actioners were sold at AFM and in recent Spec sales. Perhaps good for us action writers.

Yeah Dan M - it was the late '70s when we started crankin' out those VHS 'How To' and travel tapes. I hoped that Beta would win out -m but alas not so. I produced a number for Club Pacific. What little distribution there was amounted to private sales through fly fishing shops and local travel agencies. You're right - there was no internet or even cell phones in those days - but we survived nonetheless,

Phil Parker, interesting point that these mid-budget films pre-selling worldwide counters the notion that they are the type dying out.

It seems to me that the rapidly growing international market is obfuscating issues in the domestic market. While domestic is feeling the squeeze, non-domestic is opening up.

The big question is, is it more-so the case that low budget indie prodcos are failing to tackle the global marketplace effectively? This seems to be the issue Jonathan Wolf has been trying to make people aware of. Low budget indie productions don't just need to consider regional sales, they need to have them at the heart of their strategy.

CJ Walley I think you're correct to a degree, but I'm not a producer or a sales agent so I can't speak authoritatively on the subject. From observation, though, clearly mid-budget action/thrillers with big names attached are, and always have been, popular around the world. In the past, I guess those same markets slurped up lower-budget, no-name versions of the same product, but that stuff made its money via VHS/DVD sales? I don't understand the mechanics of it all, but now that VHS is dead and DVD sales have fallen mightily, streamers are the last hope for the schlockies. But it appears there's not enough return for the filmmaker to make it viable in the end?

The return is there but only if the producers are very savvy about how they approach the global marketplace and the production is incredibly lean. The mistake a lot of people are making is assuming that the US is their biggest market or only considering satisfying the US market when they build a production. This can be everything from story type, to casting, to tone, to locations. Then some of those people compound the issue by trying to sell internationally with zero expertise.

Even on a Blockbuster level, we're seeing that the worldwide market is essential to turning profit and serving it effectively can be tough. A good example is the Ghostbusters reboot which (good movie or bad) was always going to be held back in China since it features the supernatural and, more recently, One Upon A Time In Hollywood for the portrayal of Bruce Lee.

What we have are people making schlockies that cost five times more than they should and putting all their eggs in the US basket, still thinking they can show up at Sundance/TIFF/AFM and stand out, gain attention by paying for their own screenings, throwing money at US marketing, etc. They are still acting like it's the 90's and they're going to have their Reservoir Dogs moment. The irony is that they can, just probably not in the US.

Maybe the mid-range films aren't dying. Perhaps they were just in a state of flux, ebbing and flowing with the times.

Don't forget markets like India with its 350 million English speakers or the English speaking world of Britain and Australia. There are ways to reach the India market as well as capture the Australian and British cultures. Like CJ said, don't just think the US but look at international.

CJ's note on the long tail is spot on. (Wired's Chris Anderson was wrong in 2004 but it didn't stop him from writing a book on the subject in 2006.)

My bifurcation quote isn't new; have been saying it for about ten years. But THR's Scott Roxborough, preoccupied with bigger budget films, misses a few key points.

There IS a market for well produced, $250K - $500K films IF they are made for a very specific audience. Get past the media darlings... Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon, etc. Check out Vudu, Xumo, Tubi, Pluto and a dozen of others.

Around the world, local production - non-English - is rapidly expanding. US audiences are not alone in demanding diversity in film; global audiences also want to see themselves on the screen. This is the hidden squeeze on mid-level American films. Ten years ago 70% of the sales companies at AFM were from English speaking countries. In 2019 it was 55%.

More commercially viable filmed entertainment is being produced today than ever before, and there are more channels to reach audiences than ever before. So don't look for a single statement that defines today's marketplace for film. The marketplace is fractured - and diverse.

The "midrange" for studios is different than the midrange at AFM. The $40m films doing business at AFM are things like ANGEL HAS FALLEN, which looks like a $150m studio film... but was written and made to only cost $40m. All kinds of low budget techniques used. So the big budget AFM movies just cost the same as studio midrange movies. They have the stories of big budget studio films. You aren't seeing Rom-Coms or Dramas.