Distributor
From ForcaWiki, the simple encyclopedia
| In one sentence | A company that gets a finished movie in front of an audience, either by selling it to theaters and platforms or by showing it directly, like a streaming service. |
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| Category | Film and Television |
| Related | Distribution, Exhibitor, Sales Agent |
Think of a distributor like the delivery truck driver for a bakery. The bakery bakes the bread, but the driver is the one who actually gets it out to grocery stores and restaurants so people can buy it. Without the driver, the bread never leaves the bakery.
A distributor is a company that does that job for movies. It either sells the rights to show the film across different platforms, like theaters, streaming, and television, or it shows the film to audiences directly itself, the way a streaming service does when it buys a movie and puts it right on its own app.
How this is different from an exhibitor
A distributor is not the same as an Exhibitor, the company that actually provides the screen or the service an audience uses to watch, like a movie theater chain. A distributor often works with many different exhibitors to get one movie out everywhere at once, though a modern streaming service can act as both a distributor and an exhibitor at the same time, since it both licenses and directly shows the movie on its own platform.
Fun facts
- Some of the biggest movie studios are also distributors, releasing not just their own films but sometimes other producers' films too.
- Independent films often rely on a Sales Agent to find and negotiate with distributors around the world, rather than dealing with every distributor directly themselves.
- A distributor typically takes a cut, sometimes a large one, of everything a movie earns, in exchange for the work and risk of getting it out to audiences.