A TV audience listened to a conversation Thursday largely about indie film financing models at Iberseries & Platino Industria. “TV financing plans are more like independent film financing plans,” Creativity Capital co-founder Patrick Fischer told a packed room. “And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because there are opportunities.”
Film financing experts weigh Netflix and Amazon
A sold-out crowd at the Madrid confab for a session on the future of financing showed that TV people need to find other ways to get their projects financed. That’s becoming a necessity now that the TV drama business has cooled. An advance from a commissioning broadcaster plus distributor, or even support from a streamer, no longer guarantees that the budget will be covered by TV drama.
Fischer was asked to compare and contrast the way finance and lending works for independent films and TV dramas: "In film, we often rely on one, two or three producers to really deliver. In TV companies, we talk to the CFO, the CEO. Let's face it, TV is a bigger industry that enables bigger companies with more value, which is great for a lender."
Jacaranda Group invests in film and TV for VCs and private clients. Speaking at the panel hosted by Deadline, founder Elisa Alvares said that when evaluating TV projects, “the most important question is what’s left in terms of territories.” Tyler Gould of Magnetic Labs agreed, saying that the indie film financing model could be applied to TV if there are still rights on the table.
