Prints and advertising funds provide marketing expenses for films financed with other money. Indie film company Regent Releasing says that its $50 million P&A fund hired Proud Mary Entertainment to find and contract marketing deals for its financing vehicle.
Says a Regent press release, “The fund was established through Merrill Lynch to provide strategic print and advertising support for a diverse slate of independent features “The mission of the fund is to broaden and diversify Regent’s role in the independent film market and diversify Regent’s existing distribution slate.”
The head of Proud Mary Entertainment is Mary Aloe, whose credits as producer include including “While She Was Out” starring Kim Basinger and Lukas Haas; “Tortured” starring Laurence Fishburne and James Cromwell; and “Numb” starring Matthew Perry, Mary Steenburgen. Regent made “Gods and Monsters,” starring Sir Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave and Brendan Fraser, and received three Academy Award nominations.
While frequently talked about, P&A vehicles are few and far between, in part, since the films with the best economic prospects typically have P&A provided directly by their distributors.
Also, P&A funding usually is the “last money in” and “first money out” – meaning that the initial income that a film generates immediately pays off the P&A funder. This arrangement is difficult to structure since banks and other financiers, which sunk money into a film in early stages, must wait until the P&A funder recoups.
UPDATE: By 2011, Regent became mired in litigation over fraud claims by financiers; see links below.
Related content:
- Business Wire: Proud Mary Entertainment Rolls Into Regent’s $50 million P&A Fund
- Sam Houston Southwest Film Investment Fund
- ‘Variety’: Banks Claim Fraud Over Films, TV Series
- IndieWire.com: the 100 Films Affected by the Regent Lawsuit — and What the Filmmakers Can Do About It
- MarketingMovies.net: Oliver Stone Film Nabs P&A Funding
- MarketingMovies.net: Ad Spend, Audience Testing Central in Beatty Film Spat
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