Producing for Profit

Chapter 13Respect for the Dollar

I’ve produced movies for as little as $60,000 to as much as $70 million, and the one thing I’ve learned from producing smaller independent films that seems to go out the window in larger studio films is respect the dollar. Studios, due to their ongoing collective bargaining agreements with all applicable unions and guilds, are union shops, across the board, for the production of their films. (Although some studios, from time to time, do acquire films in negative pickup arrangements, and those films might have been shot non-union.) Studios are owned by enormous conglomerates that are publicly traded and have colossal corporate wealth.

In the independent world, my motto is: “Treat every dollar as though it’s your ...