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How did you first hear about Vertical Entertainment?
I think I heard of them when we went to AFM and looked at the contacts list.
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I heard about Vertical—I researched a list of distributors. About 100 or so distributors of films. I began emailing all of them. About a dozen of them got back to me and Vertical was one of them.
I knew about them in the ether of independent distributors.
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I’m just not knowledgeable enough about the industry to know. I had never heard of them before they made a bid on our film.
I hadn’t heard of them before. We had a sales agent that went out to get offers for us and that one came back.
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I hadn’t heard of them prior to our sales agent telling us about them. Once I researched them, I had heard of a lot of their titles which is what drew us toward them. The mainstream titles, which we were striving for. More of a mainstream release.
Most likely our sales agent submitted to them.
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I’m sure either multiple friends have had movies with them or one of the many sales agents I have worked with.
What motivated you to work with them?
There were at least two interviewees who slated Vertical’s offer of theatrical as a primary reason why they went with the company.
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It was the most legit by far. Out of all the distribution companies out there, there are a lot of good things about Vertical.
I talked with some guys who went with [another distributor] and they were fine with it. I talked with people regarding Vertical and they were fine. I felt like Vertical had experience with larger movies. They had movies like mine on their slate—they had put them out before. Gravitas did not. Vertical had some experience in this arena.
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We had a few offers, and they were the best of the offers. Their goals for the film were aligned with ours. My understanding was that they only took 35-40 movies a year, whereas other companies took on 350 titles a year.
We trusted them the most because [someone we know] is very close friends with [someone higher up] at Vertical. We had heard some things about the other distributors [who were interested in the film] that weren’t very positive. Vertical felt like there was more transparency and we wanted to bet on the film.
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It sounded like they really believed in the film. Felt like we could trust them.
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They were the biggest muscle—so to speak—of the folks who made offers. Our sales agent was adamant about their size and ability to get eyeballs on the move. We really put a lot of faith in that. Vertical felt like our way to go.
They had a good pitch that was essentially saying that a lot of the other companies we might work with may give more money up front but that we’d never see money on the back end and that their movies tend to make money even if they give less up front. Heard good reports from other filmmaker friends about working with them.
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We had several offers but [one key crew member] really liked Vertical’s titles as far as the names and the actors that were in some of their titles. They had some movies—John Travolta, Woody Harrelson-type things. We were impressed with the quality of movies Vertical had. It seemed a better caliber of company versus the other companies we were getting offers from.
What went well?
They do a really good job with big movies. Not necessarily big movies but compared to the average independent film, their bread and butter are movies that have budgets that are half million to 2 million. They seem to pick up the occasional star-driven films. They have contacts everywhere. They seem to have a good connection with the streamers where anything they pick up for day-and-date will get a streaming deal. They do a good job of recognizing a profitable movie when they see it. It really is the Hollywood studio experience.
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They did a good job of designing the poster and changing the name of our movie to something better for the market. They got our film into [well-known platform/store]. That’s about it. I’ll give them that.
Our movie is being seen by audiences all across North America. They were able to put us on a streaming platform. It’s doing very well.
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They got us a ton of press with the PR team. They took a lot of my notes for the trailer, and they communicated well enough that I understood why they what they did with regard to any marketing decisions.
The money is still coming in every quarter; they’re still selling it to places. We did very well financially.
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They do get the film everywhere. It is on all these platforms. Prominent placement. They don’t spend any money on marketing at all but everything is about their relationship with the streamers and the platforms and so they get your film pretty prominently placed on the platform—which is always the thing. Pretty easy for your film to get lost. So, it was everywhere. No one knows about it because they don’t do PR, but they encouraged us to hire a publicist. We didn’t have money to do that. It’s disappointing because there’s no awareness of the film, but it does have prominent placement on the platform. They’re straightforward for the most part. There hasn’t been any dishonesty.
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I would say the PR company they hired for us was wonderful. And then they also guided us through creating marketing materials. They helped us create a new poster and they gave us good notes on their trailer.
They got really good placement—about that I can’t complain…various digital platforms. I thought the placement of the title was good, that part I give them credit for. They have connections and that part was good.
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They probably delivered the most money of any distributor I’ve ever worked with. They made good on their word, and then some, which is very rare in the world of indie distributors. They were honest, upfront, and the movie made money.
What went poorly?
Everything had some tinge of going poorly. If I brought it all to a root cause—they’re big. If you need that specialized attention given to your film, you don’t go with a catalogue distributor. It felt like working with the studios. Distribution costs were higher than expected. You think of a dysfunctional company—a bunch of different departments that don’t really communicate with each other. It’s reactionary. That’s the problem with Vertical. You give them a movie—their marketing, their distribution team, day-and-date team will all do their thing with it. It’s almost totally disassociated. At the same time, they didn’t send a lot of money to acquire us, and they just wanted to churn it out. No matter which department we were working with, each one managed to do it wrong. [Referenced many specific deliverables problems]. Getting lost in a huge machine. Not distributing 4 movies a year but they care more about the ones they spent more money on.
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They straight up lied to us about the amount of money they were going to spend on our film.
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I don’t think it’s particular to Vertical, but with regard to transparency…there’s not enough. I would like to have more granular quarterly statements, to have a better understanding of where and how much it is playing and numbers of views, where they came from.
[Mentions very specific delivery problem that was a distributor error that they did not take responsibility for]. Once again, the filmmakers are at the mercy of the distributor, and if they decide not to do anything with your movie, they’re not losing anything. It’s just an extension of the fraught relationship that indie filmmakers have with a distributor.
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They wanted to sell it as a different movie than it was. I understood why they did that for marketing, but it gives people expectations of a certain film that’s not there. The PR team was very rude. I wish they had put more money/time into the title.
We haven’t seen a dime back yet. That was the big selling point, “Vertical pays their filmmakers.” It’s a long contract—blown away by the length of the contract. They were holding our feet to the fire. Maybe at the end of this god-awful contract, we may see some money. It’s still all paying their fees and paying for expenses, and we have a ways to go before we get out of the hole.
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[Specific complaint about key art]. It’s a blatant lie about what the film is. They didn’t feel like they were lying to the audience. They wouldn’t entertain any adjustment to rework the artwork.
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This isn’t necessarily poor, but I feel like we’ve had to ask them for updates more than we receive them. I think this is because they’re a smaller company staff-wise. We did not know our SVOD deal was with redactedredacted until a friend congratulated us because he saw our title on [SVOD platform]. I wish we would have known ahead of time.
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Just the fact that we’d never seen a penny from them. We didn’t do a good deal with them. Their expenses were high. We had a phone call with them, they went over everything. Nickel and diming us. They weren’t that enthusiastic going in—felt like when you’re chasing the hot girl in high school and bribing her to go out with you.
You’re not getting a lot of press with a lot of these companies unless there’s something about the film that gets press on its own. In terms of them getting the movie press, they didn’t do a lot for the filmmakers or the film. They didn’t make a splash or do anything that really benefited the filmmakers in terms of a long-term career (but hard to argue that when the film made money).
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The revenue reports we get are not over the top detailed/itemized. [With regard to Vertical’s high marketing cap,] of the two distributors I’ve worked with that have higher marketing caps, to be fair, those were the films that made the most money, so in a certain regard, it was worth it. The ones that we negotiated to such an extreme that they had a tightly capped marketing budget, did not sell.
Did they breach the contract?
At least one filmmaker went into arbitration with Vertical and were reimbursed excessive expenses.
[No breach mentioned, but referenced their sales agent not protecting the filmmaker in terms of the distribution contract, and that there were “some issues with the contract.”]
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Filmmaker Friendliness?
Neither friendly nor unfriendly, but I started to have a kneejerk/trigger because they were always messing something up. They are somewhat transparent with reporting.
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One of the executives—I had very good communication with one of them. They would respond within minutes—really measuredly and calmly.
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Most good distributors make you feel like you and your film are important, and they made me feel that way. Whether or not it was true I don’t know.
They answer emails. They can be dismissive of certain things. They do respond. They don’t ignore us.
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Definitely very respectful. Very appreciative of the film. Complimentary of the film. They treat the team—they’re absolutely lovely and professional.
They did not seem particularly filmmaker friendly. The statements we get are fairly itemized. Not the most itemized I’ve gotten but pretty itemized. We felt taken advantage of and that they made a ton of money and hadn’t paid anything.
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They were very communicative. I should preface this with the fact that our main contact there, whom I’ve known for a long time, is no longer at Vertical. In terms of that person—super open communication, transparent with how they were putting the movie out.
What would you have done differently?
They were our best option. I’d go back and probably do it very similarly but trust my gut a little more with regard to protecting ourselves in the contract negotiation phase.
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I would never work with them again.
I would hope to have more transparency if that were possible in a contract. If I were to do anything differently, I would try to have language that gave us more detailed financial statements.
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Overall, I just wished they did a better job of supporting filmmakers. We got taken down pretty hard by [online trolls] and I wish they did a better job of countering that.
I don’t know. Because you are so stuck with trying to find the distribution and there’s the glut of the market, there’s so many films. I don’t have the bandwidth, time, and energy to do the whole self-distribution thing. It’s so time-consuming. Trying to generate interest in my film is a full-time job. I don’t know. The only option that feels responsible financially is to not make the film, but I’ve been trying to make this film for 10 years. I could have taken another deal but they’re not going to be any better. They slap things up on the platforms as well. Wouldn’t be significantly different.
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I would have fought harder for specific deal points. I know more trustworthy distributors we could have gone with.
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I think we would have still gone with Vertical—because we loved their mainstream reach compared to the indie distributors we were getting offers from. I’m not sure there’s anything I would do differently.
Any Final Thoughts?
Investors are going to see their money back. We’re on a good road. I set the deal with a shorter number of years on it—which I feel was a good piece of advice. Set the deal shorter than they want to, so you can do it yourself if things go badly. The way it’s going now, my hope is that we’ll break even in a few years.
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I really don’t think they know we’re as unhappy with them as I ended up being. I ended up having one to two calls with different departments, questioning the numbers. I got the original sales guy on the phone—made him apologize by the end of it. There are the terms of the deal and then there’s what happens outside of that or in a gray area that you can’t litigate—even with the best lawyer/evidence on your side. When it comes to Vertical, everything they do exists in that gray area—because that’s where they get the most profit—out of what’s semi-in the contract. What they can get away with. They’re big—if your movie does really well, you’ll see a better result than you would with a catalogue distributor. You’re going to get the Hollywood studio treatment. If you don’t have that lightning in a bottle, they’re going to toss you into the grinder and there’s nothing you can do about it.
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I think filmmakers—our plan A on this next movie isn’t even to use a distributor. We’re going to the marketplace ourselves through an aggregator or something else. Filmmakers, when you reach out to distributors, all you are doing is saving them. Release your movie yourself. Raise money to hire a marketing agency to do ads. If you can run the ads yourself and know how to work with those settings, then do it yourself. Spend 10% of your budget to do it or 20% to hire a marketing firm and make sure at least half of your marketing dollars are to make ads function. Getting onto platforms is too easy for dealing with a distributor.
It’s a very strange model that you give someone something that is worth a million dollars, and they give you an MG of $15K. [The distributor is thinking,] “If we fail to do anything with it, it’s no loss for us.” The imbalance is so great between filmmaker and distributor.
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Unless you’re a big bright shiny Sundance hit, the distribution model for independent filmmakers is such that the distributor is given something of great value with very little upfront cost and the filmmaker just has to trust that they are going to move mountains to try to get as much revenue as possible from your title. But, you know, if you’ve spent a million dollars and years of your life and someone is paying you 25k for that, the economics are off. They are completely off. That’s not particular to Vertical but particular to independent filmmakers. And it sucks. $25K is nothing to them. They don’t have to get out of bed for $25K. I have to try to make my movie whole. It’s also a thing as a filmmaker that you have your hand on so many aspects of the film—at all moments—and then suddenly you just give it to someone and cross your fingers. It’s a real adjustment.
The market is so saturated with work. If you don’t come out with a deal already or make a splash at a festival, we’re all at their bidding. The terms are almost never in your favor. We are stuck in the negotiation process. You’re trying to get as good as you can, but you don’t have much leverage. It’s that lack of willingness to change that drives me crazy.
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I get quarterly statements from distributors. I dislike it when they go to semiannual or annual accounting—make sure you get quarterly throughout the term of the agreement.
If a filmmaker gets into a situation where they’re dealing with a distributor of this size, Vertical is probably the one to go with if they’re interested. There’s a lot of similarly-tiered companies, this one is the best. Ultimately—and this sucks for most of us—when somebody tells you that the super international friendly action thriller or sci-fi movie is what makes money, you quickly realize that’s the case no matter what distributor that is. Unless your weird drama premieres at Sundance, it doesn’t matter.
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Takeaways
Of all of the ReportCards thus far, there were more instances of financial success for filmmakers working with Vertical than those working with other companies. This, of course, could be due to the self selection of those who decided to participate in these interviews. However, it should be noted that in a world where filmmakers are having trouble leading sustainable careers, Vertical has tapped into a model where they are able to identify what they see as meaningful cast attachments and genres that may see a return.
However, the same worries about lack of transparency are present here, even in instances of financial success. While several filmmakers were happy with Vertical’s efforts, there were dramatic reports in the other direction concerning fear of fiduciary irresponsibility. This is all to say, no distributor is perfect and with high staff turnaround in distribution, it’s impossible to compare apples to oranges in order to fully evaluate whether one distributor is stronger than another in a general sense.
