What determines whether an indie non-union feature film is going to theatres or

Question:Does anyone know?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Does anyone know?

Whether the film was union or not doesn't really matter. What matters is can the film's producers afford the extravegant cost of producing 35mm copies of their film.... the cost of distribution... and the cost of promoting the film as well. Most independent filmmakers can't. Thus, an independent film usually only ends up in theatres if the producers can convince an established film company to distribute the film for a percentage of the profits... or if they sell the rights to do that to an established film company. Also, most theatres are no longer independently owned, but owned by theatre chains. When these chains make the decision to show a movie, they do so with the intention of airing it in many theatres.... and with the hope of making money doing that. Alot of these chains have contracts with major studios to play their films and give priority to airing those films first.

The film maker / producer will try to sell distribution rights to a theatrical distribution company or perhaps cable TV channel.

Companies like Miramax and Sundance Films buy indie films distribution rights and market the films.

If they get a distributor. Without a distributor you bicycle your in house print from theater to theater.

A release print is like $20,000-$30,000 each for a 100 minute 35mm print.

You make 40-60% of the ticket sales or a flat fee like $300 per day per theater. A theater has to bring in 50 people at $6 just to pay that $300.

A distributor covers all print costs, shipping costs and money collection costs.

So to put a film in 10 theaters you have to find someone with $200,000 to put a film in 100 theaters $2 millon to put a film in 300 theaters, which is a medium run, $6 million.

You don't any earning until at least a year.

If a theater has 100 seats and charges $7 a head that's $700 per screening if they fill it capacity.

$1,400 for twice that. You do 4 screenings a day only the evening show is filled. So you get $1,400 for the evening show and maybe $600 the rest of the day and more on Saturday. Saturday might get you two 1,400 shows and another $600 or so for the first two shows.

So do the math. $2,000 for Sunday-Friday or $12,000 plus $3,500 for saturday gives you $15,000 a week and you still haven't paid the print cost because the studio only gets $6,000 of that so it has to run 4 weeks at the SAME theater to break even on print costs.

If the producer has 10% dollar one gross, they get $600 for each week from each theater.

100 theaters is $60,000 a week $120,000 for 200 theaers 4 weeks is $500,000

So you want 400-500 seat theaters, you want 500 to 1,000 screens and you want packed houses.

400 seaters i $1 mill for the producers at 10% 400 screens is $2 million 4 week run

Distributor gets 4x that or $8 million studio gets 5x or 10 million

If the film cost $5 mill or less to make it's doing great

If the film cost $50 mil it's gotta run for 3 months and hit more screens.

Most producers won't get 10% dollar one, maybe 5% or less

Only a few actors get 1 or 2% dollar one

Everyone else gets 1-3% after costs clear or Net points which never happen.

Studio has to pay the residuals.