Distributors Demo Trailers

This may seem obvious, but remember that a film, once finished, must be seen. That's where the distributor comes in. You probably know some of them, their names appear at the beginning of the films. We can mention 20th Century Fox, Europacorp, Dreamworks, Wild Bunch or SND – there are hundreds of them! You can identify who made the film thanks to the distributors demo trailers at the beginning of the movie.

When do they participates?

That depends. To be able to distribute a film, the distributor will acquire the rights of the rightful owner, usually the producer. These will be valid for a given territory for a predefined period of time. As a general rule, the producer will look for a distributor before shooting the film to make sure he doesn't have to work and spend a lot of money for nothing.

To participate, the distributor will do some sort of pre-purchase. He will pay the producer a guaranteed minimum (MG). Thus, the distributor also becomes a co-producer because it participates in the financing of the project. Sometimes distributors produce 100% of their films.


The more ambitious and potentially lucrative a film is in terms of revenue, the sooner the distributor will have to do so. By this it means that some rights are bought on an expected film or the promise of a promising cast, from a known director, even before the film is written.

Then the distributor will not make any other decision until he has seen the film.

How much does it cost?

The law of supply and demand applies, and prices vary greatly. A film that doesn't have a great demand will sell for a few hundred thousand euros. On the other hand, for blockbusters, prices skyrocket and can reach several tens of millions of euros!

Copies?

Once you have seen the film and own the rights, the distributor will evaluate its commercial potential. It is at this point that it will be decided how many copies will be distributed. For each copy, it is necessary to pay a tax imposed by film operators to finance their digital equipment. That's why we get prints worth about €700 each! That's why a feature film that doesn't have much potential (in the commercial sense) will be distributed in fewer copies. This leaves us with badly distributed films (50-80 copies) and others that have a much wider distribution (more than 500 copies).


It is also the distributor who decides, or not, whether to dub a film, translate the title or create subtitles.

The release date, the crux of the matter.

The success of a film in theatres is closely linked to its release date. The film will necessarily compete with others, the aim is to make this competition as direct as possible. If you release a science fiction film against Star Wars, you risk bankruptcy. In fact, you find yourself sharing your target audience with people much bigger than you. It's not very smart… As not everyone plans their release dates at the same time, it happens that some of them are readjusted according to competitive positions.

The promotion

Another essential step is marketing, which will serve to bring the film closer to its audience: the viewer must know which film he will be facing. This is where promotion comes in. The distributor will be in charge of poster campaigns, trailers, press relations… even the title of the film!

Keep in mind that during the launch of the video, the promotional strategy is not always the same. Either because the objective changes, or to adjust the marketing strategy so that it is more effective than when it is released in cinemas.

In this section you will find the trailers of the most important distributors they use in cinemas in SD and HD format.