'Private Financing in Film: Between Promise and Illusion'

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‘Private Financing in Film: Between Promise and Illusion’

Private financiers urged producers to diversify their revenue streams via digital content while speaking on a panel at the Industry@Tallinn & Baltic event.

“The film business is very unpredictable, and we need to have more predictability when you’re becoming a financier,” said Alexandra Lebret, whose Paris-based Together Fund has raised €100m in private equity to invest in 12-15 independent production companies.

“Having other production activities, other formats, is something that we look at very positively,” Lebret continued, noting digital content and short-form content among the ways production companies should diversify.

“Also, it’s following the way the audience is consuming. They are consuming different content, and we need to follow them even if it’s to bring them back to theatres. We need to attract them.”

Patrick Fischer, CEO of London-based Creativity Capital echoed Lebret, revealing his next investment is likely to be a “creator-led, non-film, non-TV investment” to reflect where the industry is going. 

“Broadcast TV is going off a cliff and people are spending their time watching creators on YouTube and TikTok, that’s just a fact,” he stated. “We need to be in this business. This is the entertainment business, whether you like it or not. 

“There will be more common ground between some of those creators and some of the long-form things. Some of the formats that are developed for short form can work on TV and can work in long form. This is a very big opportunity.”

Make American films European

The panel, titled ‘Private Financing in Film: Between Promise and Illusion’, also emphasised the growing importance of co-productions. 

“I do believe in the way of having the industry more horizontal on a European basis,” Lebret said. “Gaining alliances or other companies in each country sharing rights between countries, which allows you to gather more financing.”

The financier also discussed how equity can fill the gap left by risk-averse distributors. “[Distributors] are putting less money into films, and it’s giving less relevance to the fact that we signed an agreement [with distributors] for 10 years and sharing 50% of our revenues,” Lebret said. “For what reason should we do that now as a producer?

“If you have equity coming into the sector that you can take, it can take that space.”

Elsewhere, Fischer encouraged both European and US producers to take advantage of filming in Europe rather than the US.

“The unions have pushed the budgets up to crazy levels and the US tax credits are inherently dog shit,” he suggested. “And that’s what Europe is really good at. We have strong tax credits. We have great crews.

“Co-production, maximising soft money and getting American movies to shoot in Europe is a massive opportunity,” Fischer continued. “You need to take an American movie and you need to make it European.”

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