Producing

Great projects can come from anywhere. Super excited to be partnering with Pathfinder Media and their longtime director-executive producer client Todd Biermann (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, High Potential) to find the next great talent in comedy.

Read the article here: https://deadline.com/2025/10/stage-32-todd-biermann-pathfinder-team-on-c...

Submit here: https://www.stage32.com/happy-writers/contests/Stage-32-%20-Pathfinder-F...

Hey producers! I'm curious: do you think writers should keep production realities in mind while they’re writing, or just write whatever they want and let the chips fall later?

I’ve been thinking about it while working on a dystopian thriller (in the tone of Severance). It’s definitely not a small-budget concept... world-building and stylized production design are part of the DNA. But scaling it down too much would kill what makes it unique.

So I'm really curious how producers approach this. When you read a script that’s clearly ambitious, does it excite you or make you think, “Oh come on, this’ll never get made”? Is there a sweet spot between creative scope and financial reality that makes you lean in instead of out?

Would love to hear your take on that.

The BFI’s UK Global Screen Fund is now accepting applications for its International Co-Production Strand, offering up to £300K in non-recoupable funding for UK producers partnering with international creatives.

Perfect for fiction, animation, or docs with global reach, this fund supports projects with confirmed financing and strong cross-border appeal.

So I’m asking: Is your story ready to cross borders, and do you have the right UK partner to make it happen?

Rolling submissions close Feb 28, 2026.

Here's the link:

https://www.bfi.org.uk/get-funding-support/funding-support-international...

https://www.newyorkyimby.com/2025/10/renderings-revealed-for-echelon-studios-production-facilities-in-red-hook-and-bushwick-brooklyn.html

Hey everyone,

I’m Isaiah Carter, a NYC-based filmmaker and creative director. I wrapped my short film Borrowed Time under my indie banner, Natal Space Productions. We shot it with a skeleton crew on a lean budget, and I learned a lot about where to save and where not to cut corners.

I’d love to hear from other producers: what’s one low-cost tactic that’s made a big difference in your production quality? Whether it’s clever gear hacks, crew structure, or post strategies, I’m curious what’s worked for you.

I’ll also share a few lessons from our shoot, especially regarding managing locations and lighting on a tight schedule.

Hello, everyone. I've made a couple of features but have never crossed the $150K line for budget. We're looking at hiring a recognizable face for our next project and therefore will have to go union on the next one. Yay.

Does anyone have a rundown on the ultra low budget union rules and payment rates for 2025?

Love,

Ben

In our busy world, life moves so quickly that we often forget to pause and celebrate our achievements. Each step forward, no matter how small, is a testament to your passion and dedication.

We invite you to share your Success Story! Tell us how Stage 32 has transformed your filmmaking journey. How have the resources, connections, and opportunities helped you grow? Your story can inspire others and remind us all of the power of perseverance and community.

Let’s celebrate your journey—because your success deserves to be recognized! Post your story today and be part of a community that uplifts and encourages each other.

Remember: Every great filmmaker started somewhere—your story could be the spark someone else needs to keep going.

#CelebrateYourSuccess #Stage32 #FilmmakingJourney #InspireOthers

Salomon Smith Barney (what is now Citigroup Global Markets) used to have a pretty cool and wise slogan to describe their approach to financial decisions - "It's not about timing the market - it's about time IN the market."

I think everyone on this platform would agree with extending the analogy to American Film Market, no? Look forward to attending, after too long of a pause.

And I see that Stage32 is providing an impeccably timed (exactly 1 month to festival) FREE webinar about how to make the most of your AFM attendance - October 13th | 1:30pm Pacific

You can register here: https://www.stage32.com/education/products/how-to-work-the-afm-2025

Who will be attending the AFM? cheers

The indie-film revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for independent filmmakers. 

In ye olden days, filmmaking was prohibitively expensive. It took a full company of highly trained experts to make a movie. Even the most basic production would likely require camera operators, talent, administration, film processing, lighting and electrical expertise, and the capital to cover labor and material costs. 

in the 1960s, the adoption of lightweight "prosumer" level cameras allowed the first great reimagining of world cinema. Most notably, French New Wave filmmakers introduced new energy, experimental narrative structures, and invented techniques that would expand the visual language of cinema.

However, we should think of this era not as the meritorious rise of auteur voices into the mainstream, but moreso that the Hollywood distribution machine knew a life raft when it saw one. This phenomenon we're experiencing currently, this general lack of confidence in Hollywoods' ability to create new or interesting art isn't actually new at all. After Hollywood studios spent the 40's and 50's turning production methodologies towards corporatization and "assembly-line-ification"; the cost-cutting and mad-libsy storytelling was already showing on screen. Those bored audience members were primed to go crazy when they were exposed to the novel storytelling styles of New Wave filmmakers - particularly because these filmmakers' work was itself a direct response to the same boring filmmaking that the public had come to pan. Yet these new wave filmmakers were still distributing their films through traditional, "gatekept" avenues. We may think of this era of technique as the dawn of independent filmmaking, but these filmmakers were only empowered to a point and were still dependent on studio distribution. Not David vs Goliath, but David and Goliath begrudgingly work together.

In the 1990s, the second wave of film democratization began. Another technological leap (primarily in the "speed" of film stocks and the rise of low cost audio recording and mastering tools entering the home audio market) allowed filmmakers again to reduce both the labor and material cost of filmmaking drastically. Simultaneously, the new home video market had suddenly expanded from VHS and VCRs - for the first time ever the industry could no longer keep 99% of its IP behind a paywall. Also for the first time ever, a filmmaker really was able to make their own distribution prints and plan their own theatrical distributions, town by town. But that's a lot of work, and a lot of capital investment. The studios already had systems in place for distribution and plenty of capital. Indie filmmakers, needing to pay rent and also wanting to enter the studio system and follow in the footsteps of their own idols, tended again to work with studios for release. Since studios already had the need to increase production outputs and meet new home video demands, this era proved highly profitable for both sides for about 15 years while VHS's became DVD's and then faded out rapidly as impulse DVD sales became less common during the dawn of steaming services. 

The fundamental structure of filmmaker-studio business relationships stayed fairly uniform between this first and second revolution. Most of the indie-world ran on what's called a negative pickup deal. That just means the filmmaker produces the film out of pocket and then sells it to the studio for a pre-agreed price. This was a great tool for a long time because a filmmaker could confidently produce a film, knowing they would make a profit as long as the film adhered to whatever contractual stipulations the studio had put forward (usually casting requirements, as theatrical attendance seemed to be driven primarily by lead talent's branding). It also worked out well for the studios because they could almost order films be made on demand in response to a release calendar that would shift based on sales trends in children's fiction, tmz headlines, and corporate strategizing. 

This structure of one-time cash payments unfortunately always seemed to necessitate that the studio purchase the filmmakers work outright, in perpetuity. Meaning the studio now owned the film, 100% forever. All the IP, the story, characters, everything. Filmmakers almost never owned their films, only the rights to certain royalties. (ex: George Lucas purchase Star Wars back from the studio using his toy sales royalties)

You may say, well that's only fair, the studio has accepted the capital risk behind marketing the film as a product. It only makes sense for the studio to own the IP. Perhaps you're right. In the past it may have made a certain sense and it may have even been beneficial to filmmakers, since recirculating the film over the years, rereleasing onto new formats, creating spin-off properties, all these things that can create more revenue over time tended to be out of scope for the filmmaker and only possible for a studio. 

However! We are now at the TAIL END of the 3rd and final democratization of filmmaking. IMO it started when the canon 5D Mkii came out and it ended when disney, hbo, nbc, abc, qvc, and your mom all dropped their new streaming services and turned every multibillion dollar studio into a youtube channel. That is the business model now. period. uniform across, not just "the industry", but all media in every market segment - the money comes from ads or subscriptions. (as opposed to media sales). The magical thing about that is - anyone can take advantage of that system equally.

The technology of filmmaking, from capturing the image, to post, to distribution, marketing and even collecting payments has been totally - TOTALLY - democratized. There is NOTHING that a studio can help you with that you cannot do on your own faster and cheaper by being friends with the talented filmmakers, marketers, actors, songwriters, graphic designers, etc. around you in your community and online.  

The studios no longer have any real gate to keep. So stop selling your IP!

The modern studio doesn't make money off of movies. It makes money because it has money. 

You may have heard justified complaining from indie filmmakers about how little they make from their films that have been accepted onto streaming. You may have heard about some of the "Hollywood accounting" behind some of your favorite movies. You may have been shocked to learn that the film itself, despite being well liked, wasn't profitable. As you might suspect, that's not an accident. But as you may not suspect, it's not (intentionally) intended to screw over filmmakers. 

Movies are a luxury good. When people don't have much money, they tend to reduce spending on luxury goods first. Since the introduction of television, studios have been fighting to maintain market dominance against a growing number of media options; the most existentially threatening being social media. Cinema has transitioned from a near monopoly over the global media landscape to simply one of many options. From an economic POV, the best strategy for cinema to maintain its share of the storytelling market is to be the highest quality storytelling experience at the lowest cost possible. 

Now why would the studios want to decrease the profit margins in cinema? Profit margins come from the consumer. The overall production budgets can inflate to the moon without hurting studios, because studios hire themselves, right? Every studio has an inhouse rentals, prop warehouse, costume shop, graphics shop, vfx shop, etc. So, when a studio movie spends 900 million, it usually paid itself 750 million. So the studio doesn't need to recoup that investment through ticket sales. They want those tickets cheap and in high demand; but the more profit they need, the higher ticket prices go. 

So how does a studio make profit then, if profiting at the theaters will lose cinema's market share to social media or video games?

The studios have taken the filmmakers' old niche. The studio no longer makes it's profit from making the movie - that's just marketing! Studios make their money from brand deals! 

Say Marvel makes Spider-Man 10. It costs 1 Billion. you know the breakdown: P&A, marketing, press tours, awards campaigns, the usual. Now Spider-Man 10 only makes 500 million, because Spidey 9 really jumped the shark. Oops, someone's getting fired, right?

Maybe not. these deals don't work like that anymore. The studio has a complex network of inter-connected contracts for every movie. If the movie hits XX$ million, then Hasbro will pay YY$ Million for the right to make 10 million Spidey toys; Baskin Robins will buy the rights to the Gwen Stacy Vanilla Bean Shake for YY$ for three fiscal quarters, that kind of thing. 

At the end of the day, that studio might have made 2-3 billion from other firms, even though Spidey 10 was a flop. 

So what becomes the studios' main concern? Will Hasbro and Baskin Robins stick around for next years' slate. At the studio level, movies are no longer made to be watched. - This isn't to say many individual execs don't love cinema and want to make the best movies ever; only that the machine that makes movies doesn't care. 

Now what does all this mean for the indie filmmaker?

The studios have nothing to offer you. 

No one is going to give you any money unless they know you're going to make more money back.

Fundamentally, structurally, they can only offer you a bad deal. With very rare exception, the studio will require you to sell your IP to them. (Sinners is the only exception that I'm aware of in 30 years, and the studio still owns it for the first and most profitable 25 years). So you're not going to be living off of royalty checks like the old days. The studio will not offer you any percentage of ancillary product sales and you're not going to be able to fight for them until you're already a marketable film name, to the degree that the branding of your name is fiscally worth more than the shares they can offer in exchange. The only piece of profit-sharing that the studio has available to offer you as a filmmaker is that theatrical ticket margin that is kept low on purpose. 

You sound insane, I hear you say. If that were true then why would the filmmakers I look up to work with the studio system? And they're obviously doing it very successfully. There must be money there somewhere. If only I can make it "in", then I could simply weave my tales and get paid handsomely. 

You remember how the studio system used to rely solely on casting to predict success? That's old news. Now it's all about packaging, my friend. You need an "undeniable" package. And the filmmaker is just part of that package. Famous directors don't get treated like that because their talented (although they are) they get to play the game like that bc people buy tickets for a Nolan movie, or a Tarantino movie. It's branding. It's product design. Yes they get paid, because you know their brand better than you know the brand Paramount or Fox. 

And that is what the streaming wars are designed to fix. 

That's why all of a sudden there's a Netflix "look", and a Peacock vibe across all the original content. We're in the era of familiarizing the consumer with studio brands. 

Soon the audience won't be looking for Nolan or Tarantino at all - they'll be looking for Neon and A24 (or already are) 

If all that's true - it sure looks like filmmaker and film in general are at their most vulnerable state perhaps since the dawn of cinema. The financial viability of indie filmmaking seems uncertain at best, and the future of "breaking in" seems impossible.

but I don't think that's the case. 

First and most importantly, I think filmmakers MUST KILL the myth of "breaking in". There is no breaking into the industry. There is no in and no out. If there ever was, the technology of our day has ended it. 

Please please please recognize that, if you're a filmmaker who is trying to put together their first project - no matter what it is - the studio system is WRONG for you. I would go so far as to say RAISING MONEY is wrong for you. 

You're doing this because you love the craft, the act of DOING the WORK, not one single script, not the dream of what you think Hollywood filmmaking will be like once you "make it". Stop getting hung up on all that. Please. 

Stop wanting to BE a filmmaker.

Start wanting to MAKE FILMS.

If you're sitting around with a screenplay and a pitch deck hoping to stumble into someone who invests in movies as a hobby - that's not going to happen. And if it does, I promise you'll wish it didn't. Any serious investor is going to want to know that your project is a safe financial bet. If you haven't made a film before, it's not. period. 

Those stories you hear of a friend of a friend reading a script and sending it to the right person, well that happens sometimes, but it's not going to happen to you. 

If you're serious about getting your movie made you need to be thinking for yourself, what's the next step? And you need to be stepping. 

No one is going to get the ball rolling for you, but they might hop on a moving train.