Twilight brought in $70 million in box-office receipts in its debut weekend. The film’s performance put independent Summit Entertainment into the world of franchise tent pole offerings.

Summit was re-launched in April 2007 by Friedman, the former vice chairman of Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group, along with Wachsberger, adding a major development, acquisitions and marketing branch with $1.0 billion in financing through a deal with Merrill Lynch and other investors. This was pretty common during the late days of the last economic boom; private equity was funding Hollywood in a big way.

excerpted from Forbes

To close, we describe End-User Financing and Completion Funds Financing. Based on How to Fund Your Film by Robert C. DiGregorio, Jr. imageMATTE Executive Producer Part III: End-User Financing occurs when a theater, cable network, or television station contributes money for a project in exchange for an equity percentage in the film’s profit stream. The greatest advantage [...]

  The Associated Press is reporting that the Sundance Film Festival is concerned about the slow pace of corporate sponsorships and is requesting funding from the State of Utah. Read a brief report in the Salt Lake Tribune. I’ve also heard that there are a lot of open condos & rooms to rent in Park City for 2009.

A joint venture with China could yield five movies for a $250 million dollar total.

Xinhua Media Entertainment, a Sino-U.S. co-production shingle set up in Los Angeles and Beijing, Lee on Tuesday announced a slate of five films to be made for $25 million-$50 million each.

Fredy Bush, CEO of XME parent Xinhua Finance Media — a Beijing-based, Nasdaq-listed company with interests in broadcast, print and advertising — said the slate “differentiates us from our competitors as each film has the high potential to become a global blockbuster.”

excerpt, for more: click

If there is a demand for epic films, the difficulty in meeting that demand is financing. As Susan King’s interview with Baz Luhrmann illistrates,

“Australia” deliberately hearkens back to the kind of filmmakers and films (think David Lean and “Lawrence of Arabia” or John Ford and “The Searchers”) that gave cinema its bigger-than-life scale. The kind of epics that few directors or studios even try for anymore.

Luhrmann argues that fear has been the genre’s worst enemy.

“Fear of the money, fear of the scale,” Luhrmann said recently. “It’s not easy to sell. It’s easy to market a film about one genre. But it’s not easy to market in this modern age — a film that will make you laugh, make you cry, make you swoon. This belonged to a time where cinema was grand and very brave and very, very absolute.”

Excerpt from Los Angeles Times

Technorati : Australia movie, Hollywood business, epic films, film finance
Del.icio.us : Australia movie, Hollywood business, epic films, film finance

Free Information on Finding Funds for Your Production.

Earlier this year, on a self-described “quixotic whim,” Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton rented an old Victorian ballroom named the Ballerina and set out to bring a film festival—complete with a quirky sense of imagination, beanbag chairs, and an unconventional lineup—to the seaside town of Nairn in the North East of Scotland.

read more

At the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA), my documentary Trail of Feathers: The Missile Dick Chicks Take on America is playing on little cubicles at Docs for Sale where distributors, sales agents, festivals and broadcasters come to find new films.

read more

Antonion Campos, director of Buy It Now, shares his thoughts on the state of indies, with his latest film Afterschool.
full interview at filmmaker magazine
My relation to film has been like my relationship with anyone I’ve loved in my life- it is not always easy and can be quite volatile at times but in the end I’m reminded of why I loved it in the first place. I’m happy to say that the experience of making Afterschool, though rough at times, especially at the moment with trying to find a home for the film in the US, has only reenforced my love for film and my desire to make my next. With reading all the reviews and blogs about the film, I feel that there is an expectation that all my films will be a certain way. I feel that’s presumptious and not what I’m interested in as a filmmaker. I only want to make films if I can continue to explore myself as a person and an artist and never repeat myself. In the wake of the film, I’ve been able to step back and look at all my shorts and the feature now objectively. And I can see a growth and certain consistencies in choices- both visually and thematically- but what’s nice is that that never was intentional and has felt organic.

All I can focus on now is making the films I want to make and working with the people that are interested in that kind of cinema. As I continue to make films, I hope my audience grows and whether they see them in the last few theaters left in their town or on their TV or on their computer, I can’t predict. As long as they’re not watching them on their cell phones, I’m happy.