Jonah Hill and the Jump Street Franchise

This episode of the Town is presented by HBO Max. For your awards consideration, HBO Max presents DTF Stt Louis. In this darkly comedic series, a love triangle between three adults experiencing middle aged malaise leads to one of them ending up dead Don't miss the series' TV guide is calling transcendent and Audacious DTF Staint Louis is streaming on HBO Max. Watch now This episode is brought to you by FX's loveve story, John F. Kennedy Jror and Carolyn Bassette. The critically acclaimed series explores the undeniable chemistry, whirlwind courtship, and high profile marriage of one of the most iconic couples of the twentieth century with Sarah Pigeon and Paul Anthony Kelly leading a cast including Naomi Watts, Constant Zimmer, Alessandro Navola, and Grace Gummer Called a stunning Portrait of Love by Variety, Loveestory is Emmy eligible in all limited series categories. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers It is Thursday, june eleventh. Hollywood movies are a fascinating mix of commerce and art. Sometimes those two things aren' at odds, sometimes they enhance each other. I've always found that even people who have worked in Hollywood for years often don't understand how the commerce part actually works, how the money is collected, Who gets it? when they get it, and why That's especially true in the world of independently produced movies big studio or streamer makes a movie, they put up the money and hire people to make the movie. Then they collect about half the box office gross from the theaters and exploit the film in various windows, from premium video on demand, all the way through to free TV and even YouTube The talent involved is either paid upfront or a mix of upfront and a portion of the proceeds from various windows, depending on what they've negotiated It's more complicated than that, but not as complicated as the indie film world. where there can be dozens of financial backers on one film, all with a stake in the outcome plus a distributor that pays to acquire a film and release it, sometimes globally, sometimes just in a specific territory or a handful of them, or for a specific term The talent who makes the film often works for little money upfront and a share of the proceeds in success if they can negotiate that, often not At the center of it all is the so called waterfall, the money that flows in from each window throughout the lifetime of the film. revenue waterfall is especially relevant when a small budget indie movie becomes a big hit somethingomething like the current horror thriller obsession. made by filmmaker Curry Barker for only about seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, and it sold to Focus Features, a division of Universal Pictures, last fall at a festival for about fifteen million dollars up front. It's now grossed more than two hundred forty millionars in worldwide theaters on its way to what could be a three hundred million dollars gross That's just in theaters too. So who profits from that? And how does that waterfall flow? There's been a lot of speculation about this topic online, a lot of garbage out there that an art director on the film has voiced her displeasure at being paid less than ten grand total for her work So that's our topic today, and to discuss it, we've got Manette Louis on the show. Manette is a professor in the graduate film program at Columbia University and a veteran indie film producer. She's taken projects to Sundayance, Toronto, all the big festivals, and she's worked on countless deals She's not involved in this movie at all, but last week amid all the chatter about who got paid what on obsession, she posted her own estimates based on her experience in the industry Today we're gonna go through those estimates. It's the obsession, windfall, and who makes what on a big indie hit. From the Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Belleneany, and this is the Town Okay, we are here with Minette Louis, who is a veteran independent film producer as well as an assistant professor of professional practice and co head of creative prodroducing in the grraduate film program at Columbia University. I love that title. Welcome. Thank you. It's a mouthful So I wanted to have you on because You know, we have a lot of very sophisticated listeners of the town who know everything we're about to talk about today. and we also have a lot of people who are not and don't And we also have a lot of people who think They are sophisticated and really don't understand the minutia of this stuff So when the financials of obsession started to go around the internet and I started to do a bunch of face palms at some of the misinformation that was out there. and then you posted a response to the face palms and said, listen, we got to get some, you know basic facts right here. I said, let's have Manette on the show to just go through and do an explainer episode of how the financials of an independently financed and distributed movie through a studio specialty division makes money So can we do that? Well, first of all, explain briefly just how the waterfall of revenue works on an indie movie? Yeah, I mean, it varies obviously from film to film, but there are some basic things. And I just want to, you know, explain that there's two different types of water There's two different waterfalls. There's the distributor's waterfall So that's the all the accounting statements that Fcus put put out for Obs There's the doer's waterfall. and then after that, below that is the licenser's waterfall or some people call it the producer's waterfall. Well, I guess there would be a third, which would be the exhibitor, the theaters. but we're not going into that today. They take half the revenue from the box office and then they take all the concessions. Exactly. They make their money that way. Exactly. And that's the one thing that the main thing that people misunderstand is Focus gets half the money from the theaters, you know, just right off the top. So then once the money comes into focus, focus would take a distribution fee. It's usually like, you know, thirty percent, thirty five percent, forty percent of all the gross receipts they collect. And that's their fee for paying themselves to do the work do the hard work of releasing the movie. And that's why they paid a fifteen million dollars minimum guarantee to acquire the film. at film festival like Toronto. They That's when you see these headlines like Obsession sells for fifteen million dollars, that is focus paying the minimum guarantee of fifteen million dollars to acquire and distribute the film. in this case worldwide No, it was US plus a couple of international rights because Capstone, who was the financier, also, I believe, sold the international rights So focus took some territories. But the distribution fee is a little is a separate from the MG, the MG or minimum guarantee is basically it's a minimum guarantee or an advance against future sales So it's recoupable. It's recoupable and they recoup that plus interest. Okaykay? So like on top of the fifteen million, they're recouping interest plus two percent, usually prime plus two percent. on the interest Plus, they have to recoup all the money they spend on marketing and distributing the movie. or the PNA as we call it, which I don't know what that number is, but you know And is the PNA typically recoupable? Yeah, They pay themselves back to create the DCPs, to create the posters, to design them, to cut the trailer, all that stuff, to fly Curry Barker here there and everywhere to promote the film. So yes, all that is recoupable too pay for shadow Twitter accounts to start promoting the movie by posting positive things and then retweeting it. Yes, yes, exactly. Viral is not a real viral is a creation. Believe nothing you see on the internet. Exactly, exactly. And then also the box office bonuses that they pay out to folks like you know, Jason Plum and you know whoever else is able to negotiate box office bonuses when the box office receipts hit a certain target. Well, let's get we'll get to that. But but let's go through the distributor's waterfall here. So money comes in the door and Where are all the different sources of money? So there's, you know, theatrical, there's transactional VOD. So you know when you rent a movie or buy a movie on iTunes or Amazon or whatever That revenue is shrinking. There's still physical media, you know, a little bit DVD. Oh yeah, Sean Tennessee He's going to hold out to the very end.. And then there's S vod streaming and television licenses. That's kind of the biggest chunk right now And then there's not theatrical like airlines and film festivals and various things like that. But that revenue comes in later. That's why it's called the waterfall because it you know, sort of pours over the entirety of the film. And how is that accounted for? You hear that opening weekend or the theatrical distribution will ate the value put on the movie for other windows. Explain how that works in the indie context. Yeah, sure. Well, there if basically like with these streaming deals, if The box office hits certain milestones then the license fee goes up So it's sort of a tiered system. So it's like, if you hit one hundred million, we're going to pay you, you know, five million more or something like that for the license fee. That's why it's so important because it tates the value of the film in all of the windows. You can say, oh, this movie didn't do well in theaters, but it'll probably be a big hit on streaming. The big thing is if it gets to two, three hundred million dollars at the box office, it's treated differently throughout the other windows than a movie that doesn't. Absolutely. And even if they don't hit those, I mean the milestones is one thing, but just this sheer, you know, if you're doing big numbers of the box office, then a lot of people have seen your a movie. A lot of people are aware of it. And so they'll come seek it out on Hulu or Netflix or whatever. Okay, so that's all the incoming money for the distributor. Let's talk about the deductions. You mentioned distribution fee, which they take themselves Yes. And let's say, you know, let's assume that This movie obsession gets to three hundred million dollars So a typical distribution fee would be thirty percent, you're saying, on an indie like this. thirtycent to forty percent. And it's different for every type of money. Theatral is different than SVod is different than TVOD So those numbers can vary. So a distribution fee on a three hundred million dollars grossing movie. and I know this is not apples to oranges because that's the global number and Foccus doesn't have all the territories. But just for the purposes of argument, let's just say that it was global thirty percent of three hundred that would be U ninety million So thirty percent, let's just take the domestic number if it gets to one hundred fifty. I think it's a little above that, but let's use one hundred fifty. That would be forty five million dollars as a distribution fee in theaters for That's right, Not bad. That's triple the price that they paid to acquire the film. Yeah, it's not bad. But it could have gone the other way. I mean, they've put in tons of millions of dollars into this film. and if it didn't do well, then they would be at a loss. Yeah, and they eat all the marketing costs, but those are reoupable. So what are the other deductions? know distribution and marketing? So yeah, distribution be the marketing expenses, any kind of bonuses they paid for box offfficer VOD and the minimum guarantee, the fifteen million they paid to the licenser that gets recouped plus the interest on the minimum guaranteed, which is like prime plus two percent. So after all those things are deducted, that's when you get into the net receipts or the net profits and that gets split between the distributor and the licensor. So it could be fifty fifty, it could be like seventy five percent in favor of the licenser. I've gotten a deal once where I got to keep one hundred percent of that backackend. And what caused you to get one hundred percent? Was that just the leverage you had? in demand All night bidding war? It was an all night bidding war, so yeah. And I heard this was too. So I do think that the producers did have some leverage here to, you, get some good deal terms. Right. And so in that kind of context, you think that the share of revenue for the producers is going to be very favorable I think So I mean, it may not be as high as the seventy five percent I put in my waterfall, but it could be like, you know, sixty percent, seventy percent. I do think they probably got a majority Well, so let's use your number. Let's use seventy five percent that you put in there. So let's continue the analysis here. I feel like we're doing SAT prep course So first First, let's like fininish out the distributor So get to all of the revenue that they are going to make. Yes. So they're making their distribution fee, which we already talked about, they're making the interest on the fifteen million MG they paid. and then they're getting this twenty five percent share of net. So those are the three different sources that they're getting money from Also Foccus has sequel rights. So if there is obsession two through ten, they will participate in those movies. That's nice. They're going to get to do a Halloween horror nights maze at Universal Studios. like there will be other ways for them to profit off this. This kind of a movie could be an anchor in a package of movies that gets licensed to foreign television or others. And there are ways where these you know, it will forever be in the Focus library, which is the Universal library, which brings value there. So there's a lot of ways that these studios get value out of these movies. We are just going through the specific PNL on this particular on this particular title You have total there as being, you know, a windfall O Let's say For the purposes of this argument This movie gets to two hundred million domestic and the territories that focus controls On a two hundred million grossing movie for a distributor like this in the indie context where they paid fifteen million upfront What do you estimate the take home from the theatrical window is for focus. I mean, here, let me plug it into my spreadsheet because I'm not going to estimate that off. So basically, if they're getting they're getting one hundred million dollars, right from that two hundred do. And we don't know what their marketing spend was exactly. And there's a lot of variables here. Yeah, we don't know, okay they'd be getting is three million Just from the theatrical distribution. Yeah. justust, you know, assuming all my assumptions are correct. Not bad Uh And that's just the beginning. So But let's flip this because this is what I think most people want to know about. Let's flip this to the people who made the movie. Yes. because that's where we saw this art director complain that, you know, she was paid three thousand dollars, sorry three hundred dollars hundred a day, endnded up making less than ten thousand dollars on the movie. She wanted to get adddditional payments. that typically doesn't happen Have you ever seen in the Iie context, Bonuses across the board to everybody who worked on the movie Yeah, SXing Sing did it. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah. And there's a great on YouTube. They did a very detailed case study with Dolby. So if you Google Sing Sing and Dolby, you'll hear the filmmakers talk about how they did that. And know, they had seventy five people in their cast and crew.. And they were able to do that. And they basically, you know just very quickly, they treated everybody equally, they gave everyone the same pay The only variable is time, like how much time each of them worked on the film But everybody participated. But it wasn't that negotiated upfront It was't negotiated up frront. Yeah. And that's what Ben and Matt Ben Afleic and Matt Damon, they do that with artist equity, where they give everyone a piece right of the bonus if they get to the streaming bonus. But That's all negotiated up frront. I mean, when you have a contract and you agree to terms, it's really tough to go in after the fact. It is tough to go in after the fact, but I've been given backke in after the fact. I didn't negotiate it. You know, my very first film, mutual appppreciation, the director Andre Badowski, he made some money from that movie, a little bit of money, not even that much, but as soon as he made some money, since none of us were paid, he gave us money. We didn't ask for it. He gave it to us, you know. That's very nice of him I don't know if they corporate studio is going to do that. They probably won't. They probably won't. But I myself have had like allocated points on my unallocated points on some of my films and I'm like, hey, you know, this person has does such a great job. I to give them some points, you know, even though the deal is already closed. But I will say, you know, Sally, I'm really glad that Sally Chroy brought it up because this conversation needs to be had. I think it's important. and I think she was brave to do it, you know, especially as a woman of color in this industry, like or're unicorns, you know, we don't get second chances and we have to work ten times as hard. So you know, and it's it's kind of crazy that these so called liberal filmmakers are they're arguing against sharing of wealth It's a little crazy to me. theirir minds have been like thoroughly colon colonized by traditional film capitalism or something. Well It would be nice if they did share. I know they probably don't have any obligation to and there's companies like Blumhouse that came in after the fact and they could share as well. So we'll see if any of that ends up happening. Yeah. I mean,, you know, on the other side, there's a lot of crew who you know, are saying that producers and directors are selfish for not sharing And you know, they're not acknowledging or maybe they don't know that very often on tiny films like this, we don't even pay ourselves. likeike we get zero upfront for years of work, for years of development developing and packaging. Well, and you do ten of these and nine don't work Exactly. I know. it's a very complicated issue, but I am glad we're talking about it. So let's get to the licenser's waterfall, the producers waterfall. So take us through who put up the money for this movie and how they get paid Yeah, so they they get the minimum guarantee of the fifteen million do that Fcus paid in the first place U And sometimes that's most of the time, that's all the money you'll ever see from a movie. you know. That's why it's so important to get that upfont. Exactly, exactly. And it's an indication of how hard the distributor is going to work to distribute your film. If they pay you zero, they don't have to work very hard to make that back, right? So so they're getting a fifteen million dollars alum guarantee. And in my example, they're getting a share of net the seventy five percent that we talked about earlier And then they probably negotiated some box office and VOD bonuses as well. That's on top of the share of net That's on top of the share of net and you know, I didn' I didn't put in estimates for those because those can range really widely. L they can be all over the place. So I didn't want to guess there Well, there was a report out there this week that said that Blumhouse had negotiated box office bonuses. So if Blumhouse had them, you got to assume the producers had them as well You would think so, but you know Jason Blum is a brand and, you know, he has the leverage to negotiate that kind of stuff. So And he brings a lot of value if you you know marketed a via Blumhouse. they have expertise in how to get these movies to the right audiences. So ye exactly We shouldn't assume you're right But it wasn', you know, u, um Bidding more a tiff, right? So when you have a bidding more situation, then you do have leverage. So let's go through the Rest of the waterfall, That's the revenue coming in the producer. What are the deductions that are charged against it? Yes, there's a lot of those. There's all the middle people that we have to work with to sell the movie, right? So that includes a sales agent, you know, who's selling the movie. In this case, I believe it was CAA, I think who did that Capstone, I think was their international sales agent, CA only did domestic. So domestic sales agents typically charge between five percent and ten percent right off the top of whatever the producers make. So they're, you know, at TIF, they took percentteen mill And that's off the sale price. That's not off of the box office. It's off of the sale price and it's off of whatever the producer makes. It's off of whatever comes into the producer's water fall. Oh, so it travels beyond just the sale of the festival. Absolutely. It gooes to the net profits as well. Yes, yes, it does. Oh, interesteresting. It's so funny agencies pulling back these days on these independent film divisions. WE, you know, they let their people go and, you know, I keep hearing business is just so challenged for these agencies. If you are not Rogue Sutherland at CA, it's really tough to make that a real business because so many of these films just don't sell at all. Yeah, ye, it's true. It is tough. So when you have a movie like this that is a one hundred percent unequivocal success I guess you you want to capitalize as much as you can on it Yeah, no, absolutely It it is a tough business. But it does take away from the producers Yeah. I mean, what just keep in mind like this is a one in like ten million, you know example, like most indie films don't make money. So yeah, so ten percent to CAA betweenween five and ten I don't wantan to say it's always ten. Between five and ten, between five and ten, the international sales agent usually makes between like fifteen to twenty five percent of the international receipts receipts. So why is it more there Because they sort of do more legwork because they have to go a lot of them go like territory by territory. So they're selling films to like, you know, the Spanish distributor and the you know Middle Eastern distributor and like the Australian distributors, they kind of have to go knock on these doors and it's a lot more legwork having to travel to markets. They have to go yacht to yacht at camp. Yeah. I mean God, you know, who's going to do that work? Exactly, exactly. So and then they those sales agents, those same international sales agents, they have a lot of expenses going yacht to yach. So they usually charge a bunch of expenses and it's usually like twenty five thousand to forty thousand. So they take that off the top. And then you need that's the Rose bill at whatever cann restaurant they do the dinner at. Yes, exactly. And then, you know, you need lawyers to negotiate these deals, right? And so you're usually paying either by the hour or like, you know, sometimes you'll do like two percent to two point five percent of whatever's coming into to the producer with the floor and a ceiling. And then of course, there's the collection agent, if you engage one, which you should if you're, you, making all this money and having to pay all these parties. So collection agent charges like one percent and they basically collect the money and make sure it's paid out. properly to the right people. Okay. so that's a lot of deductions. There's more. There's more. there's more Okay, keep going. There's the guild residuals. okay? So like usually so you know, this I think this movie only was SG. It didn't use Ayati crew. And so usually focus, a company like Focus as big as focus, they'll assume the residuals. So they'll pay the all the SG residuals But then these smaller distributors that Capstone is selling to, you know, like the Spanish distributor or whatever, they're not going to deal with paying residuals. So the producer has to do that. So we have to skim off the top in order to pay SG so that SG can then pay out those residuals to the actors. Residuals are a form of backkend, by the way. And so that's why this was a non union crew. If it were union crew, they'd be getting residuals on the backe end in a big pot. The only way you get to a seven hundred fifty thousand dollars budget is if you use a non union crew. Basically Yes. There's no way to do a movie like that with a union 'sin Did I miss anything? I think that's basically it. And then you want to keep a reserve from the money you collect is you know, the producer is saddled with dealing with the film for the rest of their lives. We have to deal with the tax accounting every year and the maintaining it and all that. So we keep a reserve to deal with that That' a lot of deductions. We're looking at like between twenty thirty, forty percent off your top It's a lot, It's a lot. And that's not even accounting for deferrals, right? No, it's not where that comes later. So next in line is the investor recruitment. Okaykay. So like Cathstone put in seven hundred fifty thousand dollars, I believe, for the film and they get paid back that seven hundred fifty thousand plus a premium, which is usually like fifteen percent to twenty five percent, So let's use twenty percent So on top of that seven hundred fifty, they're getting another one hundred fifty as their little reward. And then you go into cast and crew deferrals. Oh man. which I put at one hundred thousand, you know, So it's like, you know maybe Curry waived his entire fee. you know, so he's getting kind of paid from this residual this a deferral pool And you know, a lot of crew I've paid like the DP and department heads from this deferral pool if I'm not able to pay them their usual rate front. Okay. So they take a risk and say I'll work for much less or And you pay me if we make money. Exactly. They're investing their labor. But the fact of the matter is it's got to make a lot of money to end up in profits like this. Yes, exactly because of all these deductions we've been talking about, right? And then okay, then after the deferrals are paid out then you Here we get into the points, the bke end that everybody is talking about. Right. And that's what we end up talking about on successful movies is what are you getting of the upside And we've already explained how you know, there's a lot of things that have to happen and a lot of deductions that have to be made. But then if after all of these payouts, you get to profits, net receipts then there is a mechanism to share. Yes. And those mean basically it's the contracts that the crew and the casts have negotiated with the producer. You know, you negotiate your upfront pay, any deferred pay, and then whatever points you get on the bke end. And so if you hit a big, like in a movie like this those points will actually materialize and you will get money So if someone says, I have five points on this movie, what does that mean Itpends So their points can be confusing because basically there's a hundred percent, there's a hundred points, a pool of one hundred points. Half of those points go to the investor. And usually, and half of them go to the producer or the licenser. And that half that fifty percent is what we control as producers and we can dole out to cast and crew So if somebody says, I have five points on the film, you assume it's five producer points, you know, not five total points. five producer points. So that's five percent of that fifty percent. So two and a half of the whole. Two and a half of the of the entire Ry, exactly. And if you say like, oh, we weren't able to get a big actor, so we had to give points to would tell Edge of four or Renata Rinesva to get them in backrooms or something like that. That's what we're talking about Exactly. And yeah, for names like that, they usually take the biggest share of the pie. And interestingly, there represented by one of the big agencies, which is often the agency that ends up selling the movie. Yes, there's a lot of dipping Yes. We don't have to get into that. That's the other thing too is like,, you know and writers and actors, they have to basically take twenty five percent off the top of their own pay ten percent to their agent, ten percent of their manager and five percent to their lawyer. So I'd like people to keep that in mind as well This podcast is brought to you by Landman As oil rises from the Earth, so do the secrets. Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, and Sam Elliot star in the exxplosive secondecond season of Landman One of the best TV shows of the year Ravves the Rrap This season is better than ever, says Esquire. From Taylor Sheridan, Landman continues its run as a cultural phenomenon for your Emmy consideration in all categories. Now streaming on Paramount Plus. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn adds Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO LinkedIn has a word for that. Bllspan Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO LinkedIn ads generates the highest Roaz of all major ad networks Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more Bulls span Avertise on LinkedIn The network that works for you Spend two hundred and fifty dollars on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a two hundred and fifty dollars credit for the next one Just go to LinkedIn dot com slash the town That's LinkedIn dot com slash the town. Terms and conditions apply So let's go through the waterfall for the the Palent participants Yes. How does that typically producers get the most? Well, no, the lead A list actor gets the most. Okay. I mean, in the case of obsession, these were not known names. Yeah. so I don't think they got very much. I think I probably got a couple of points. The producers probably got the most The director got a lot, I would imagine. And I don't and I usually give, you know points to my department heads at least. I don't know what happened here, I have no idea. So a line producer or a DP or a composer, editor, those people can get points on an indie movie. Yeah. and most and many of my indie producer colleagues do give points to these department heads because we're asking them to work for less than their usual rate, you know, on these little passion projects that we have, right They're investing their labor and their time. So we're giving money because of that. And in the ultimate success of a movie like this Is that Are we looking at a Million dollar windfall for a typical below the line participant? A are we looking at a know couple hundred grand? Even even in this situation, you know, my what was my example? I can't even find my own example right now, but you know, one percent at the current box office when I did this was worth one hundred twenty seven thousand dollars So now it's probably up to one hundred fifty So if Sally Chi gotten a point on this movie She would have had an extra one hundred and fifty grand She would have She's an art director. She's not the She she worked under the production designer. So R. So she's probably not getting that in the best case scenario, but let's say she did Yeah. Yeah, she'd be getting an extra one hundred thirty thousand dollars, fifty thousand dollars All right, so bottom line here Give us your ranking of the people who made the most money on obsession, taking the theaters out of it, taking focus out of it Wh is making the most money likely on obsessions? justust from obsession. Not for because Curry Barker has gotten really great deals after obsession, right? for his subsequent films, right?? No, we're not talking about the he everyone associated with obsession is going to get a bump The stars of the movie are going to get big roles. I've already heard lead actress is up for a ton of things So Give us your ranking of people just on this movie Okay, I would imagine Curry and the lead producers, thoseose are British guys, I believe got the most. I mean, Curry is a brand, right? That's why they reached out to him in the first place. Those producers like you know, saw some promise in him. they saw he had an audience and they they took the risk of, you know, making his first feature So they should get rewarded for it and so should Curry. And what about Blum? Blum's got to be on there. Now with that rarap article that came out, I, you know, it sounds like he made a nice sweet deal with focusus and Universal for his bonuses. So probably up there as well But so okay, Manette. So like this movie makes three hundred million dollars. you take half of it. So are we saying Cry Berer who wrote and directed this? likeike ten, twenty million do bucks? Does that feel right I don't want to say because I don't know what he got in points. I really I don't want to speculate and everybody is always thinking taking this is like fact, right? So I don't want to use hard numbers, hard dollar numbers. But more just to kind of have a sense of like, okay, if you are someone like him and you make a movie that hits big, like what could you make off this? Yeah, I put the numbers in and it's like, you know, it's under ten million. It's like six million bucks. It's under ten million. It's not's Yeahah's a, it's a of money but it's not like, you know C money or whatever. It's not tech money, right? But Does that surprise you, Craig? I mean, this guy did not have like biggest leverage going into this, this is a tiny movie. Totally. and getting six or ten million dollars is obviously great. And then of course, like Menet said, like what this gets you is it sets you up for everything else afterwards. Yeah, the whole reason you do this is for the next movie and the movie after that Yes. And the real winners here are the producers Yeah and the distributors. Yeah, and the investor the investor a lot of money And the stars who got a huge bump off this Yeah will have careers I think everybody crew, everyone, you know. I think when you're associated with something successful like this, like your next thing is your payment. All right This movie obviously is an anomal What percentage of Indie movies that sell at film festivals. I'm not talking about the morass of movies that try to find a distributor and don't or self distribute or whatever The headlines we see at film festivals, what percentage of those end up in profits You know, everybody asks this question. I've been trying to look for the answer. The reason why I think there's just not a lot of like reliable data out there is because these are Each Indie film is like a private company. you know, we form LLCs, we don't make any anything public, you know, we work in an industry of smoke and mirrors, so nobody wants to admit their failures. Well, that's why there's so much litigation also. Exactly. Shady people, and there's so many nuances to these deals that it just it is a breeding ground for bad behavior and ultimately litigation. Yeah, unfortunately. But you know, the number I often use is basically like two percent of all indie films get that get made recoup for their investors, notot even hit it big, just like recoup period. two percent. twowo percent. That's worse than Broadway terrible. It's not a business you want to go into if you want to make a lot of money, you know And the old days of the DVD market saving these films, that's long gone. Unfortunately, yes, we have to find an alternate because these stream you know it was streaming for a little while But these dreamers are not buying these films anymore. Unless Netflix thinks they can get an Oscar nomination out of it, then they'll pick up some movies that can. Potentially, but you know, that only benefits a handful of movies, but like the distribution model is broken and needs to be fixed. That's the biggest problem in independent film right now. Well, how would you fix it? You got a platform here. I don't know. It's a huge problem. I'm going to teach a class on distribution in the spring, so I'm trying to figure out and I'll let you know. You can have me on again and I'll tell you I know. I want you to fix the indie distribution problem because I hear this all the time. peopleeople complaining about the model and, you know the streamers were great for a few years because they were buying up global rights and everyone was getting paid. But then they backed away a little and now it's sort of left with this wasteland where a couple movies hit it big at these festivals and everybody else is chasing scraps. Yeah. I mean, it's been that way for a long time. like there're always there's always like a handful of films that like, you know, to have the bidding wars But the rest of the films would find some kind of distribution, would find some kind of home, even if it weren't like making a lot of money, they would find a distributor willing to take it on and putting in the effort to put it in theaters are in the VOD or whatever, but we're not even finding that now. Well, hopefully the outside success of obsession will lead to people taking a little more risk and being willing to take chances on some films And we'll get a little bit more heat around this market I sure hope so. And I do hope that what Sally said will spark others to think about different models. And I did want to mention one other, there was a company called Indigent back in the early two thousands that really pioneered. they were the OG of like this backend sharing with crew. And they were partnered with IFC films, which basically funded their slate. and IFC was so generous shared fifty fifty with the company from the first dollar whichich is so which never it would never happen these days, you know. And how long do they last I think maybe not quite a not quite a decade. I see might still be around. I've see still around. Yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah. I have se still around That company is not, unfortunately. Yeah. All right, well, we will figure it out at some point and we will revolutionize the indndie Film business you and I. Thank you for coming on the show. Appreciate it Thanks, Matt All right, today's call sheet is brought to you by FX's The Lowdown from Sterlin Hardjo, starring five time Academy Award nominee, Ethan Hawes. Craig, I'm gonna place a little bet here and say that you are a fan of the twenty one Jump Street franchise Absolutely That seems like right in your wheelhouse. Yeah, it's like twenty ten to twenty fourteen range. That was That was the sweet spot Those movies are good. Theyre great twenty one jump street, twenty two jump street Yeah good comedies. The rare sequel that came out right after the original and also was great. Yes. They've been trying for ten years to do a third one And it's always been difficult because according to my sources, Jonah Hill D didn't want to do legacy sequel like that. He wanted to be a real filmmaker and he had elevated beyond that. He was doing Wolf Wall Street and directing cool movies like mid nineties and things like that. Totally That's why it was so funny to see the announcement this week that twenty four Jump Street, they're skipping twenty three apparently. It's an inside joke and going straight to twenty four Jump Street and yes, Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum and IceCube all in talks to return And my prediction is not just that this will happen It's more why this is happening I mean Jonah Hill right now is not in a great spot as a filmmaker. outrage. No, outcome outcome worst title ever. Ocome just came out on Apple. Have you and have you actually seen that movie Now, it's in my ceue. I need to watch it I'm not a critic, but man That's a whip and they paid a lot of money for that. They Keanu in it. They had Cameron Diaz in that movie And then more importantly is he had a movie he directed called Cutoff with Kristen Wig that was supposed to come out via Warner Brothers in July. and Warner has just punted the movie No release date And Jonah was directing that. Yes No release date I heard it was a total disaster unreleasable. They are trying to fix it now. And I think that because of those two setbacks, Jonah has fallen into the warm embrace of a franchise that he knows will be a hit. Oh, I see. Okaykay. You think this is a reset here? Let's do something that's bankable that everybody likes, whichich is probably smart You know? Yeah and like they're not, you know, I know the premise of these movies is that these are two guys who could Theoretically pretend that they're in high school or college. So I don't know what the new bit is going to be. But you know, these guys are Joonan Hill's forty two, Chan and Tatum's forty six. forty six. But they're a young forty two and forty six. So sure. Yeah. Okay. You can get away with it. They're not too old Yeah. mean I like the idea of them doing a kind of menial job or some kind of like fast food job or something like that. That could be funny. Yeah, I mean, Lorde Miller are producing but not directing. They're not directing. Peter Rodney Roothman is directing Yeah. one of their guys who directed the first Spiderverse movie. So he's in the Lorde Miller family. Look, When you make a legacy reboot comedy or sequel comedy, I mean, it is rare that these work like Zuander two, the Dumb and Dumber two. the ten years later comedy Hard to pull off. Very hard. Remember they were gonna do a men in Black crossover at one point? Oh yeah That's not happening. the men in Black not where it was. Yeah. Sony these franchises Jonah Hill now needs this and I think all the stars are aligned. this movie will happen and it will probably be dated for summer of twenty seven twenty eight Hopefully this will help remind people that they like to go to the theater to laugh Yeah, and hopefully it'll remind people that they like Jonah Hill. He's great. I love Jonah Hill. Me too. I want him to do more movies like this. All right, today's call she was brought to by FX' The LodowDown. This gloriously off kiltter noir is an AFI television program of the year and one of twenty twenty five's most critically acclaimed shows. The Lowdown is available for your Emmy consideration on Hulu and Disney pllus for Bundle subscribers Okay, that's the show for today. I wan to thank my guest Manette Louis, producer Craig Horlbeck, All editors, Satt Pebeck and Jesse Lopez. and I wanna thank you. We will see you next week.