The packaging and financing of drama films has become increasingly challenging, a panel of experts told Winston Baker‘s inaugural Film & Television Finance Forum Venice on Friday afternoon. “Dramas have gone from being difficult to very difficult,” Benjamin Kramer, co-head of the media finance department at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), said during the panel entitled “State of the Industry: State of Finance.”
Still, “there are plenty of dramas of all budget tiers that get made … even $30 million,” noted Kramer, who has been involved in the packaging, financing, and sale of such films as Sing Sing, Nyad, and The Revenant. The funding and level of funding will always be “depending on the filmmaker, depending on the cast, depending on if it’s based on something significant,” he added.
Kramer’s comments came in response to a question from fellow panelist and Italian producer Lorenzo Gangarossa (Conclave).
”The feeling from Europe is that there are many movies in the drama space, let’s say 10 to 20, which are not made anymore,” the producer shared. “There is no financing or it seems there is less financing available in the U.S. So I’m receiving calls at the moment for movies that I would never get access to before, because they … just see if there is a European model to be built.”
Some of these projects could indeed tap into European funding if they can qualify as a European movie. “Most of European cinema is financed through presale to television,” and big broadcasters must spend 80 percent of their annual content budget has to go toward local fare, he explained. “Now, if you qualify as a local film, and if you can have a co-production with three, four European territories, you qualify locally as a national film.” While putting together projects that way “is not an easy thing,” Gangarossa said this is “a suitable business model” for movies with the right cast and/or “a big European piece.”
Kramer replied: “We do look across the Atlantic a bit for dramas.”
The CAA expert then outlined why challenges for dramatic films exist: “That’s all a trickle-down from they don’t do as well in that pay-one window,” he argued. “So then the independent distributors who don’t have outputs aren’t buying them as much. They are also finding them more challenged theatrically.”
Christian Vesper, CEO, global drama at Fremantle, echoed that, sharing some insight on a conversation he had earlier in the day. “We just had a meeting this morning with a big global distributor who’s interested in one of our films,” he told the Winston Baker event. “The first scene takes place in China, and [the distributor] was like, ‘Can you add some of the local language ahead of that, so people know they are watching a movie on the service that’s in their language?’ When you’re working with filmmakers, that’s not a note. That’s a demand.”
CAA’s Kramer said his team has heard similar things, “initially driven by platforms and then driven by theatrical distributors who have been educated by those platforms,” even on something “as unexpected maybe as a horror film or an action film or a comedy.” He continued: “The feedback we keep getting from those various touchpoints is: It has to be clear to a viewer whatever that movie is in the first three minutes. If it’s a horror movie, have something scary literally in the first three minutes — no exaggeration, because otherwise, on the platform, it’s very easy to just change to something else. If it’s a comedy, have your comedy scene, have your joke.”
Concluded Kramer: “Whatever it is, make it very clear so there is no slow build. And it’s difficult to say to a filmmaker, ‘Your script is great, but just take that scene that’s on page 20 and just pop it on page two.’ But we get that feedback, and you feel a little bit like you’re just making widgets.”
