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Chapter 12 - Prints-&-Ads Funds
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Because filmmaking is capital intensive, the money spigot can run dry when it’s time to pay for marketing expenses. The independent film sector buzzes about the availability of prints and advertising (P&A) funds, which are investment vehicles focused narrowly on covering marketing costs for theatrical releases. In reality, such financing vehicles are frequently talked about but seldom materialize.
In the jargon P&A, “P” refers to the prints, the bulky reels used by theaters to project films. The reels cost about $1,000 per movie to manufacture. “A” is the advertising expense for newspaper, television, and other media to support theatrical release. Ad expenses can range from a couple of hundred thousand to millions of dollars for a film.
One active P&A fund is Palisades Pictures, a New York City-based entity. “Because of the big growth of content, we will do 48 films [in 2005] for over $21 million [invested],” forecasts Palisades Pictures chairman Vincent Roberti. Palisades’s funding comes from McGinn, Smith & Company, Inc., an investment banking and brokerage firm founded 24 years ago in Albany , New York Los Angeles
Palisades is providing between $200,000 and $750,000 in P&A funding per film. One beneficiary is “The Agronomist,” a documentary about a Haitian freedom advocate from Hollywood filmmaker Jonathan Demme. The ThinkFilm release generated only $226,000 in box office, although Palisades is confident it will recoup from sales to television and video. “We never make a loan based just on box office [revenue expectations],” said Roberti.
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Copyright © 2005, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Relationship of High Box Office to Wide Theater Release 1998–2002
Box Office ($ mil.)
$100 68
$75-99.9 27
$50-74.9 66
$30-49.9 79
$25-29.9 15
$20-24.9 16
$10-19.9 48
under $10 7
Note: Figures cover July 1998-March 2002 of all films reaching at least 2,000 screens at some point in their theatrical release
Source: Nielsen EDI, IMDB