On Spec
From ForcaWiki, the simple encyclopedia
| In one sentence | Making a movie without any distribution deal already signed, hoping to sell it only after it is finished. |
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| Category | Film and Television |
| Related | Presale, Financier, Distributor |
Imagine baking a big batch of cookies before you have a single buyer lined up, just hoping and trusting that once they are done, people will want to buy them. That is a riskier bet than taking orders first and then baking exactly what people already promised to pay for.
Making a movie on spec, short for "on speculation," means doing exactly that: filming and finishing a movie without any signed Distributor deal in place first, and only trying to sell it once it already exists. This is the opposite of a Presale, where the distribution deal is signed and the money is promised before a single scene is shot.
Why anyone would take that risk
Making a movie on spec gives the filmmakers total creative freedom, since no distributor gets an early say in how the film turns out. It also means the finished movie can be shown to distributors exactly as it is, which sometimes leads to a bidding war between several distributors who all want it. The tradeoff is real risk: the financiers who paid for the movie have no guarantee anyone will buy it at all once it is done.
Fun facts
- Some of the most beloved independent films were made entirely on spec, with nobody agreeing to distribute them until after they premiered at a film festival and impressed a crowd.
- Making a movie on spec is much riskier for financiers than a presale, since there is no minimum guarantee locked in ahead of time.
- Film festivals are one of the main places where movies made on spec finally find a distributor, sometimes very suddenly after a single well received screening.