Reddit mentions of Rebel without a Deal: or, How a 30-year-old filmmaker with $11,000 almost became a Hollywood player

Kevins smiths movie don't do well in cinemas. They make a killing on dvd, blu ray cable and vod. What you also have to understand is how his movies are made. He gets the money for the most part from private investors. For example tusk was 3m. so kevin makes the movie then he goes to foreign distributors (australian, nz, UK, mexico, japan, china, spain and so on) working from least important to most important he begins to sell off the rights in those countries.

Say he get 25k for spain another 30k for japan, 250k for mexico, 1.2m for aus and so on. basically he sells the rights to all the countries he can even places like brazil that will only pay like 4k for it and bit by bit he gets the 3m.

At that point he walks back to the investors with a check for 3m and tells them he still has the rights to say some parts of the UK, NZ, Italy, France, Germany and Netherlands and America and Canada. At that point they choose to either sell off the rest and what they make they split between the backers and smith (smith gets say 25% backers get 75%). kevin says for some fucking reason i have a big following in Germany NZ and Ireland maybe sell all the rest and keep those. so they make say another 4m off all the rest of the rights they sell (1m to kev 3m to the backer) then cause they didn't sell Germany nz and lreland they decide to just vod the movie there and they make small amounts of money every time the movie is bought on itunes, pick up by netflix played on tv and so on.

What you also have to remember is not every deal is the same. some deals are for the cinema release only some might be only for vod some might be for dvd and vod. the length of time on some contracts might be 3-5-7-10 years and some contracts (mainly the ones where they take everything) have percentages. So say with the Australian deal they were willing to paid 1.5m for everything but because it's a amazing 2nd market for smith he pushes so he and the backers to keep 20% of the vod and dvd sales. they say they will only pay 1.2m kevin does the math on the 300k vs the 5% of the dvd and vod and realized he would make about 750k if tusk sells like most of his other movies have so he excepts the deal.

When you work at the bottom of the budget sort of movies this is normally how it is done.

Oh forgot to mention the person that bought up the US/Canada rights bought them for 2m. yes a minor lose, but they still have all the vod and dvd market so the movie will actually make money.

I get it's sort of hard to follow but this is the reason some stuff on your netflix isn't on mine and some stuff on my netflix isn't on yours

Edit: how do i know. [A friend of mine wrote a book of his experience directing/selling his first movie explaining in great detail the process. also Kevin is featured in about a 3rd of the book so it's a good read just for those bits] (https://www.amazon.com/Rebel-without-Deal-30-year-old-filmmaker/dp/1456334832)