Feature Film
Screen Australia analysed 119 applications, with 97% of projects including an ANZ Distribution Advance within their finance plans. While the majority of advances represented less than 5% of total project budgets, the data highlights the important role local distributors play in P&A market support, a pathway to Australian audiences, and leverage when assembling the wider finance package.
When analysing the rest of world (ROW) Sales Agent participation in finance plans, 96% of applications had a ROW sales agent attached, with 48% of those sales agents providing a Minimum guarantee (MG) upfront.
While sales agents were frequently involved in financing structures, approximately half of the projects did not secure an upfront MG commitment. The data suggests that both the likelihood and value of MGs generally increase with project scale; larger production budgets that can be driven by genre, cast attachments, and commercial ambition, attracting the strongest international marketplace commitments. This reinforces the importance of international sales estimates as a key financing lever for all projects and especially those projects with budgets above $10 million.
Most Film ROW MGs were below $500,000, although a number of higher-budget projects secured substantial MGs exceeding $2 million.
Gap financing was included in 34% of feature film projects. The strongest reliance on gap financing occurs in feature films in the $5M–$15M budget range, where around half of projects required it. Projects at this scale are often large enough to create financing shortfalls, but not always large enough to attract sufficient marketplace investment to fully close out the finance plan.
While gap financing was not seen in all applications, projects that did utilise it often relied on it as a significant component of their budgets, with 70% of gap backed projects, carrying financing gaps greater than 10% of total production costs.
This analysis suggests that gap finance continues to play an important role in enabling a portion of the market to close funding shortfalls, particularly within the mid-budget range of $5-$10M.
While gap remains an important financing tool, the majority of projects are being financed through other sources such as agency investment, offsets, presales, distribution advances, MGs and equity.
Nineteen percent (19%) of feature film projects included rest of world (ROW) presales as a component of their finance plan. The data indicates that presales are not currently a core financing component for most Australian projects, however they often represent a larger share of financing when compared to ANZ Distribution Advances.
An interesting finding was in budgets under the $5M category, seven (7) projects secured ROW presales and in three (3) of those projects presales were worth more than 30% of budget. Presales remain an important, though highly selective financing mechanism when structuring a finance plan.
Only seven (7) projects (6%) of the applications analysed involved an official co-production partner. The $5M-$10M budget range accounts for more than half of all co-productions. Ireland was represented in nearly half of all co-productions. Other territories identified were Canada, France and India with both Canada and Ireland providing ROW presales as part of the financing structure. While co-productions remain an important financing and marketplace component for a small number of projects, it is not yet widely utilised and the data shows there is room for potential growth and opportunity. Screen Australia has observed an increase to co-production activity which will be reflected in future analysis and insights. Australian official Co-production partner countries can be found here.
The following graphs and tables provide a detailed breakdown of marketplace contributions across project budget ranges, examining both the % proportion of total production budgets represented by marketplace finance and the corresponding dollar value of those contributions.
Film – ROW Sales Agent
Summary
The overarching findings from the analysis, is that Australian productions are typically financed through a combination of funding sources, with marketplace contributions playing an important role. Even with ANZ distributors and ROW sales agents frequently engaged, direct marketplace investments can often only represent a small proportion of the overall budget. Substantial contributions are achievable though remain limited to a smaller set of projects. The findings reinforce the importance of developing realistic project budgets aligned to market appropriate financing expectations and successful projects are often those that can effectively combine multiple sources of financing and marketplace partnerships.