Sales Agent
From ForcaWiki, the simple encyclopedia
| In one sentence | A company hired to find distributors around the world and negotiate the sale of a movie's distribution rights on the producer's behalf. |
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| Category | Film and Television |
| Related | Distributor, Distribution Rights, American Film Market (AFM), European Film Market (EFM) |
Imagine you made a really great video game, but you have no idea how to find stores in other countries willing to sell it, or how to negotiate those deals in languages you do not speak. You might hire someone whose whole job is finding those stores and making those deals for you, taking a cut of the sales in exchange.
A sales agent does exactly that for a movie. They are hired by a producer to license the film's Distribution Rights to distributors all around the world, territory by territory, rather than distributing the movie themselves. Sales agents often do much of their work at big film markets like the American Film Market and the European Film Market, meeting with distributors from many different countries at once.
Fun facts
- A sales agent usually takes a percentage of whatever a movie earns from the deals they help make, as their fee for finding and negotiating them.
- A good sales agent can be the difference between a movie finding distribution in dozens of countries or barely finding any at all.
- Sales agents are especially important for independent films that are not backed by a big studio's own distribution network.