Will We Ever Learn?
By Dr. Ted Baehr
Several years ago, a Christian family filmmaker asked me if I knew any financiers for his next movie. I said to him:
“You made three movies that lost money. If you go after financing again, knowing that your movies won’t make money, aren’t you just taking advantage of your family, friends and other Christians who are putting their money up?”
Sadly, this corrosive syndrome of raising money from family and friends, who know nothing about the business, has grown exponentially.
To put this in perspective, the entertainment industry is a business, a very lucrative business. Every step needed to finance your movie is already in place. We teach this in the HOW TO SUCCEED IN HOLLYWOOD (WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SOUL) class, where we also have incredibly successful Hollywood Entertainment Industry leaders, such as one who made $14 Billion at the box office and in royalties, as well as Hollywood film financiers, teach the students to show them how to raise money within the system without taking money from your family and friends (which is too time consuming). Some students get it and become very successful.
During the week I’m writing this, I talked to one of my students, whose movie is being fully funded by Universal Pictures. The next day, I talked to a very Christian filmmaker who’s just acquired the rights to one of the most popular Christian books of all time and has several studios bidding to fund and distribute it.
Many people have the misconception that the entertainment industry opposes Christian movies. Actually, the entertainment industry makes movies for various different audiences, including Spanish speaking audiences, black audiences and Asian audiences, etc., with the Christian audience being another one of them. In our class, which is an intense five-day workshop, we show students how to design entertainment and reach the faith-based audience.
Since our Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry shows movies with strong Christian content and values make money, there’s been a steady increase in the funding and production of big budget movies with strong Christian or biblical faith and values that earn hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of the most successful movies with strong Christian, redemptive or morally uplifting values in recent years have been movies like THE SUOER MARIO BROS MOVIE, THE SOUND OF FREEDOM, SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE, the MISSION: IMPOSSIBELE movies, THE BATMAN, TOP GUN: MAVERICK, UNCHARTED, SING, and THE GRINCH. Also, by far, the most successful independent movies are faith-based movies like JESUS REVOLUTION, HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, WAR ROOM, GOD’S NOT DEAD, and SON OF GOD. The Report to the Entertainment Industry looks at 100% of the movies earning $1 Million or more in terms of 150 criteria to see what elements succeed and what fail.
On the other hand, most of the movies funded outside of Hollywood have made no money or very little money when compared to those movies made within the system. Furthermore, those movies have often left the financiers high and dry.
Even so, there are several financiers that continue to fund movies. Some of them like the glamor of Hollywood. Some of them think it’s fulfilling the mission. One very wealthy Christian made a movie that only made about $3 million. At $10 a ticket, that’s an audience of 300,000 people in a country of 336 million. I asked him why he made it. He said he wanted to get the Gospel out, and I pointed out that those numbers indicated he didn’t fulfill his goal.
Of course, some filmmakers want to just make “art” and others want to be independent, but then they should make it clear to their financiers that they have very little hope of making any money at all.
In this regard, a movie has to earn two and one half times its production, distribution and marketing costs to break even. The minimum to market successfully is over $10 million. So, a $10 million low budget movie has to earn over $50 million to break even. Why? Because in the best case scenario, the theater takes 50%, and then the distributor deducts its costs and takes 50% of the remaining 50%. Very few Christian movies earn that much.
The HOW TO SUCCEED IN HOLLYWOOD (WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SOUL) class is a short workshop in how to make movies that reach a large audience and fulfill the mission. Major Hollywood Entertainment Industry filmmakers, lawyers, financiers, and studio executives show the small group of no more than eight students how to succeed without re-inventing the system. It is full of stories of people who do succeed, and people who’ve tried the alternative system of self-finance and failed or made just a pittance.
The best advice for wannabe movie financiers is to take the HOW TO SUCCEED IN HOLLYWOOD (WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SOUL) class and learn how to succeed by not taking money from family and friends. In most cases, investing your money in a movie that is not built on a successful foundation is like giving money to a homeless person and expecting them to pay you back.
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