Producer fees and pre-sales challenges: Six key themes from the 2025 Screen Summit

Screen International’s ‘Building on the UK’s Global Success’ Summit 2025, held on September 30 at BFI Southbank, gathered top executives from across the sector for a heady mix of panels and Q&A sessions. They came together to discuss future prospects, what needs to be done to bolster the sector beyond UK borders, and why being a creative producer is not for the faint-hearted. Six key themes emerged.

Producers in peril

The Summit kicked off with British Film Institute (BFI) chief executive Ben Roberts offering a rallying cry, noting that independent producing is the art of resourcefulness. “It’s one of your creative superpowers, along with great storytelling craft and guts,” Roberts told the audience. “It’s that alchemy that’s impossible to pin down, but priceless when it works.

“It’s true that things for independent filmmakers have been particularly rough of late,” he acknowledged, as producers having sleepless nights over budget shortfalls, fee deferments and closing become the norm rather than the exception.

“I worry for new generations coming through and how they are coping with small-budget projects and how they get [paid their] fees,” said producer Iain Canning, joint founder and CEO of See-Saw Films, speaking on ‘The Trailblazers’ panel. “However low-budget films are funded, producers shouldn’t have to defer fees to the point where they’re not getting paid, because they’re the future for fresh talent.”

For the UK film funding bodies – BBC Film, Film4 and the BFI Filmmaking Fund – efforts are being made to mitigate the need for producers to defer fees. The audience was reminded all three have to make a little go a long way: BBC Film has an £11m ($14.8m) annual budget, Film4 has £20m ($27m), while the BFI Filmmaking Fund is £20.3m ($27.3m).

“We put practical resource into our late development budget,” said BBC Film director Eva Yates during the ‘Future of UK Public Film Funding. “We pay for bud­gets and schedules, and try to ensure the project is as aligned as possible to the projected costs and what producers can raise from the market.”

The BBC funds up to 40% of its production investment before closing as long as the budget plans are clearly mapped out.

Film4 director Farhana Bhula said: “We cashflow 10% pre-closing, in some instances, more. We also then encourage the other financiers that we’re working with, because we don’t fully finance, to also do that alongside us.”

The panellists all identified the pre-closing period as being a particularly tricky moment for most producers. Mia Bays, director of the BFI FIlmmaking Fund, said: “We often award late-stage development funds to keep the film going so it doesn’t fall over before finance closes.”

Bays noted the BFI can’t lend against the tax credit because the lottery funding that backs it comes with specific restrictions. Of the BFI funding in general she said, ”We’re in the business of building stars,” citing working with actors and directors including Harris Dickinson, Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson early in their careers. 

Small screen, big benefits

‘Trailblazer’ panellist Liza Marshall, a former Channel 4 head of drama who also boasts a stint as head of Scott Free Productions UK, launched Hera Pictures in 2017. Her first move was to produce for TV to help bankroll Hera’s set-up and fuel her ambition to make features, a far lengthier and riskier business.

As UK-based producer of Chloé Zhao’s Toronto audience award winner and awards hopeful Hamnet, Marshall noted the film took seven years to get to the screen. Hera’s high-end TV credits include I Fought The Law for ITV, Mary & George for Sky and What It Feels Like For A Girl for the BBC. “In TV, you don’t defer fees. When you’re trying to get a film off the ground, you’re often asked to,” said Marshall.

Fellow ‘Trailblazer’ panellist Ed Guiney, co-CEO and founder of London and Dublin-based Element Pictures, also shone a light on the importance of producing for television and streamers in building his company.

“In our business, TV is slightly more predictable in that you can imagine where you might be in a couple of years with a project, whereas film is unpredictable and much more about the value of opportunity in the market,” he said.

Guiney’s notable TV credits include producing the series Normal People, Conversations With Friends and The Gallows Pole. Canning and See-Saw’s TV credits include Heartstopper for Netflix, Slow Horses for Apple TV+ and two series of filmmaker Jane Campion’s Top Of The Lake.

Underwrite the tax credit

It is still too early to empirically assess the impact of the UK’s Independent Film Tax Credit (IFTC) and the increased tax relief for visual effects in film and high-end TV that came into effect in April but, anecdotally, there is no disputing it is delivering what Roberts described as “a much-needed shot in the arm for films under £15m [$20m]”.

”We’re looking for British talent and want to shoot here in the UK,” said John Friedberg, president, international of Black Bear, citing the tax credit as a big draw.  “Our talent loves it [in the UK]. they want to come and live here while we’re filming here.”

But several UK producers said they wanted to see the IFTC become of greater value to the indie production sector.

“The tax credit is effectively a government bond and people are making 15% to 20% cashflowing that while producers are not getting paid,” said Andy Paterson, an experienced film producer whose credits include Girl With A Pearl Earring and The Railway Man, taking part in ‘The Disrupters’ panel alongside fellow UK producers Sarah Brocklehurst of Brock Media and Helen Simmons of Erebus Pictures.

Paterson – who recently teamed with Vue Cinemas and Dimension Studios and producer Annalise Davis to form Virtual Circle, a company looking to make a slate of theatrical films using virtual production – wants to cut out the middlemen. “I would say to the government, ‘Underwrite the tax credit and do not let people make fortunes out of cashflowing it for producers,’” stated Paterson to applause from the audience.

Brocklehurst, who works across film, TV, theatre and audio, revealed she did not close financing on Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun, a feature that grossed £2.4m ($3.2m) at the UK box office, until after it wrapped, pushing up her stress levels.

Last month, Simmons’ Erebus Pictures travelled to Venice Film Festival for the world premiere of Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights Of Hero. “It’s still a little bit galling how much you lose every time you get that tax credit and work out what other people are making on it,” said Simmons. “But it is super helpful in getting projects made.”

Chilling times

“I don’t think we have enough horrors or comedies,” noted Bhula of Film4’s slate. “Genre films that can be made at sensible budgets within the infrastructure that exists here, and then could also sell internationally, is an area producers could look to.”

She urged producers to “pay attention to things that are selling out of Sundance and Toronto”.

Later in the day, Simmons picked up on Bhula’s comments: “A lot of those projects are, if they’re truly commercial, driven more by script than an auteur director. They have to be put together in a different way, and there has to be an open-mindedness towards how they would get developed.”

Horror returned during the day’s final panel ‘The Big Picture’, which saw a brace of top distribution executives talk about the evolving marketplace for UK film. Panellist Zygi Kamasa, founder and CEO of distribution and production outfit True Brit Entertainment, said: “You have to be mindful that North America produces great horror films but I believe there are audiences for horror with a British flavour.”

John Friedberg said Black Bear is developing several horror films to produce and finance in the UK. “One of my goals for this year is to try and execute a British genre film,” he said. 

Model behaviours

An ailing pre-sales marketplace and the need for realistic budgeting while identifying an audience for a project before it is made were among the talking points from the panel ‘A Changing Model’, with Maven Screen Media co-founder Celine Rattray, Mister Smith Entertainment CEO David Garrett, HanWay Films CEO Gabrielle Stewart, Good Chaos founder Mike Goodridge and mk2 Films executive consultant and UK lead Vanessa Saal.

Goodridge used to run sales company Protagonist Pictures before setting up as an independent producer in 2020.

“The project could go to a platform, it could go to a studio, or it could down the more traditional model,” said Goodridge of his early days in sales. “[But] in 2017, I was seeing the streaming platforms coming in so hot and heavy, I actually thought the sales business was going to die. That hasn’t proved to be the case. But pre-sales are in the toilet.”

Rattray, who set up Maven with Trudie Styler, said a streamer or studio onboarding feels like hitting the jackpot because it now happens so rarely. “We can’t count on Amazon paying for your film. Realistically, you’re going to have to get it financed independently, so we work with foreign sales companies and view them as our partners.”

For Garrett, buyers require “real theatrical potential” before they will get their chequebooks out. “That means something that creates a conversation, something that people will go to the cinema [to see] and come out afterwards and talk about,” he said. “There is a pre-sales market for films that have a clear audience of real theatrical potential.”

If you book them, they will come

Garden Studios head of commercial and marketing Debbie Adler, Great Point Studios head of UK studios Gerwyn Evans and Film Soho head of studio Kate Phibbs mulled the importance of relationships with independent producers on the ‘Spotlight on Studios’ panel.

Garden Studios in London offers 400,000 sq ft and 100,000 sq ft of stages, while Great Point Studios in Cardiff has 72,000 sq ft across four stages with plans to expand by 60,000 sq ft next year. Film Soho, a 1,000 sq ft studio in central London, focuses on virtual production.

“Our parent company Arts Alliance has taken a step into equity investment and co-production,” said Adler. “We want to have problem-solving and creative conversations with independent productions that qualify for the independent tax credit, looking at how they might use our facilities, while also receiving investment from Arts Alliance.”

Phibbs pointed out virtual production is no longer just a playground for big-budget franchises. “A few weeks ago, there was an indie film that needed some pickups, and we worked very closely with them to work with their budget. We want to work with independent producers.”

For Evans, running a studio is about relationships. “We work with production companies and I’ll have chats with anyone about how we can expand those relationships and keep them coming back to Wales.”

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