The 2025 season was a triumph for indie -chief. Indie -stalwarts Sean Baker’s “Anora” and BRADY CORBETS ”Brutalist“Dominated Oscars, Combine for 16 nominations and 8 wins, sweeps the largest categories of the night. And it is to Baker and Corbet’s credit that during the month long limits of awards, each one chose to highlight how it is difficult to earn their life-fäven on the top of the indie film.
“I’ve talked to many filmmakers with movies nominated this year who can’t pay the rent,” Corbet said on Marc Maron’s WTF -Podcast While discussing how filmmakers are not paid to market their films, including under prices. “Both my partner (Mona Fastvold) and I made zero dollars on the last two films we made. Yes, actually zero. So we had to live just a paycheck from three years ago.”
For their part, Baker spent a lot of time on the campaign track and discussed the headwinds that the Indie Filmers meet. In his Indie liquor speechWith reference to the time it takes to make a movie, he asked a rhetorical question: “How do you support yourself with little or no income for three years?”
We asked that question to producer Alex Saks on this week’s filmmaker Toolkit Podcast When we explored the question of why even the most successful Indie Flies cannot serve their lives. Saks is an indie producer, with 24 producing points that include bakers ”A Florida project“And”Red rocket. “Before she produced, she was a film financing agent at ICM, where she structured indie movie agreement and helped director clients get her films from the ground.
“Sean said at his indie -spirit -tal,” I can do this because I don’t have children, I have no family, “and it is objectively not sustainable in any other way,” Saks said at Podcast. “He has done this because of pure passion and power of the will, and probably because he cannot see himself to do anything else, but it is such a rarity on several levels. It is a big point on How is this durableAnd I think the answer is that it is not. “
On the podcast, SAKS got the reasons why this is the case, including a breakdown of mathematics involved in equity investments, which is how a majority of how the films premiere at the major festivals are financed. With the help of the rosy (some would say Dream) scenario with a movie that costs $ 5 million and sells for $ 7 million, Saks explained how little money actually reaches the creative team.
According to this system, the capital investor floated the cash flow to make the film. They would regain their investments of $ 5 million, plus a $ 20 percent premium – so $ 6 million goes to the investor. The sales agent would also charge a 10 percent fee; That’s $ 700,000. From $ 7 million, it leaves $ 300,000 to share between the investor and the filmmakers. This means only $ 150,000 for the creative team, which can include producers, writers, director and crew members. The parts vary from project to project and negotiated individually.
Under the same hypothetical budget of $ 5 million, the director drew a salary for their services during production. But if a movie takes three years to do, it can amount to less than minimum wage.
“Depending on what they need to achieve on a budget of $ 5 million, (the director’s salary) may be everywhere from $ 75,000 to a few hundred thousand dollars, but a few hundred thousand would (just go) someone who probably made a bunch of movies – they will make this smaller project and maybe they could order that fee,” said Saks. “Otherwise you are probably in low, low six digits. And then who knows how long the movie took to be composed.”
In other words, that director would have to live on $ 75,000 plus during the three years spent to get the project written, from the ground, prepared, shots and through post -production. Often, directors spend part of their fee back in the film’s budget to cover the resources needed to see their vision come to life. And remember that this is all on a budget of $ 5 million. For the sake of comparison, ”Aor“Was Baker’s eighth function and his biggest budget by far $ 6 million, and it only came after the critical success for” Tangerine “,” Red Rocket “and” A Florida Project. ”
Saks also discussed how Hollywood’s dramatic swing against subscription services has increasingly turned off independence from a large revenue flow. Few independent distributors have SVOD output agreements – which A24 has with Max, or neon has with Hulu – and large platforms have become much less likely to buy the streaming rights for Indies that they do not buy directly.
“The other distributors who are independent distributors, if they do not have the (output) offers, from what I hear, it has become extremely challenging for them to get a SVOs business to get these (dollars) from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu,” said Saks.
Saks also talked about how independent movies are becoming more difficult and more expensive to do in the United States. For example, SAKS discussed how “red rocket” was made with 10 people in 2020, during the first year of Covid, and in a way that will probably not be repeated in 2025.
To hear Alex Sak’s full interview about the state indie -financing, subscribe to Filmmaker tolkit podcast on AppleThe SpotifyOr your favorite podcast platform.
