Soft Floor
From ForcaWiki, the simple encyclopedia
| In one sentence | A guaranteed minimum share of profits for a producer that can still shrink a little further, unlike a hard floor which cannot. |
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| Category | Film and Television |
| Related | Hard Floor, Participation, Net Profits |
A soft floor works almost exactly like a Hard Floor: both are meant to protect a producer's share of a movie's profits from shrinking too much because of other participations owed to talent. The difference is what happens right at that floor.
With a hard floor, the producer's share simply stops shrinking once it hits the floor, and the distributor absorbs any further cost. With a soft floor, additional participations can still come partly out of the producer's own share, so the producer keeps bearing some of that extra cost instead of it being fully shifted onto the distributor.
Fun facts
- A soft floor is generally a little less generous to the producer than a hard floor, since it does not fully protect their share from shrinking further.
- Whether a floor is described as hard or soft is a heavily negotiated detail in a producer's contract, since it can meaningfully change how much they end up keeping.
- Both kinds of floors only matter once a movie's Net Profits are big enough for this whole conversation to come up in the first place.