Each year, billions of dollars are spent on entertaining us, making our hearts melt and convincing us to buy one more bucket of popcorn. But are the billions showing up in producers’ paychecks as well? Since the pandemic hit, filmmakers have been forced to stay one step ahead; not only with the general competition of movie-making, but also in the fierce rivalry for funding.
How do filmmakers learn what their audience wants to see? How can they receive the funding they need? How can new technology share valuable customer insights? One Atlanta-based film financing company, FilmHedge, may just be the answer.
FilmHedge has just closed a $100 million-dollar financing deal, $50M from Coromandel Capital, a private firm, and $50M from Fallbrook Film Finance. This deal gives FilmHedge lending capacity to revolutionize film, media and TV financing with their technology and data products. The CEO, Jon Gosier, makes a compelling argument for the creation of this new deal. In a recent press release, he stated “Our mission at FilmHedge is to make media investing more efficient, faster, and more scalable. You can’t really do that if you’re a film fund, a bank, or private equity shop. Those models require too many decision-makers to sign off on a deal, which means they are slow.”
This groundbreaking investment from Coromandel Capital and Fallbrook will provide a blueprint for others to look into partnering with lending companies outside of traditional bank loans. In Coromandel Capital’s latest press release, they explained that this investment will “permit its clients to earn better terms over time, provider operational advisory and outsourced capital markets.” The company is a short-term gateway to assist up and coming creatives in the industry to forge ahead and to continue to create entertainment that we know and love without financial hardship. With their products, there will be more frequent quality programming on our TV screens. Not only will their 12-month lending products and services assist the producer, but the investor as well; the system provides the first ever program that’s able to track reports, such as production spending and timelines, for investors in real-time.
Prior to the pandemic, filmmakers and media producers had various approaches to entice lenders to pay attention to their latest projects. Since then, it has been a pivot to the next big idea, and the next big paycheck. The shift in balance of control between the producer or the lender has been significant; the producers are making more money than ever before.
So, why is this important? Streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon acquire movies made outside the big six studios, releasing them directly to consumers and further limiting the pool of movies available to brick-and-mortar distributors. Admissions will continue to feel the pressure of these changes, which will have a trickle down effect on the revenue a producer receives.
FilmHedge, Coromandel and Fallbrook hope that their partnership will allow the financing and the media industry to both get a new wind and forge ahead. Gosier elaborates, “faster underwriting means more qualified deals which translates to faster, and in some cases, larger returns.” This new investment will also help Coromandel service and venture into untapped markets as well. FilmHedge is creating a blueprint for how new partnerships can provide assistance even for generations in these industries to come. Diversity, technology and new partnerships in both the funding and production marketplace just may create a new path for the next generations behind the camera or microphone.
