What do you do when:
You make a film that plays at film festivals around the world.
You get a positive response and win a few awards.
Your film sells to over twenty countries around the world.
It gets released theatrically, on DVD and on Blu Ray.
But...
Your international sales agent simply refuses to pay you the money he owes, and stops taking your calls.
???
Obviously one way is through the courts, but this will be costly, lengthy, require fee advances to lawyers, and if the sales agent should go bankrupt, you're just going to be left with a lot of costs.
When the sales agent is a member of the IFTA, you can call for them to arbitrate.
But what if it turns out that the sales agent whose web page has always claimed that they were an IFTA member turns out not to be?
Basically, there is not much you can do.
Perhaps the only thing you can do is to publicise the story, so that other filmmakers might be able to avoid the same problems.
To read about it, visit:
www.michaeltavernamontecristo.info
Thank you.
Paul Spurrier
I've dealt with this exact sort of business with two very expensive and complex botched medical surgeries, and unlike money or business, botched surgeries take an extreme toll on your health. What you need to do is simply send this person a lawyer-written, or layer-signed letter stating that you or someone else will take them to court unless a settlement is reached, and this will most likely scare this guy into paying you, or signing a contract stating he will pay you whenever he possibly gets the money (it's obvious he truly has none.) There's no way a court wouldn't find you in favor, and you wouldn't have to own their company for it, you'd just have to make the courts make him pay whenever he can, they can probably make him sign a payment plan, and even then, don't the courts pay some damages automatically?
I'm terribly sorry to hear about this. I have a friend who experienced the same situation with his own film. Thank goodness much of traditional distribution is making way for new forms of middle-man-less outlets.
Thank you for writing this. You will probably prevent other filmmakers from making similar mistakes.
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No-Fluff Filmmaking ideas for the awesome, ambitious, and smart:
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