Jon Reiss recently published two posts on Filmmaker Magazine entitled, “Distribution Transparency: Four Filmmakers Reveal Their Distribution Numbers” Parts One and Two.

He interviews filmmakers from four projects:

• Neil Berkeley (Director of Beauty Is ‘Embarrassing & Harmontown’)
• Judy Chaikin (Director of ‘The Girls in the Band’)
• Paco de Onís (Executive Director of Skylight Films), and
• Jon Betz (Producer of ‘Queen of the Sun’)

It turns out that monetizing your film is long and hard work.

The takeaways?

“Knowing your goals is essential to creating a release strategy.
Know your audience and target your release to where they are; offer your audience products (event, digital or merchandise) that are interesting to them.
Split rights have a greater advantage of control and profit for filmmakers over all rights deals.
Work with distribution partners to get films on major platforms.
Engaging in distribution and marketing is very hard work and generally involves a staff or at least someone full time managing the process.
Email lists are gold – develop them constantly.
Events motivate people to go to theaters.
Events are excellent ways to connect with audience.
Event theatrical is a good/great way to promote ancillary sales.
It is possible to break even or even make a little money from an event theatrical release.
If you can, carve out direct-to-fan sales since this will give you the following advantages:
* Higher profit margin per purchase.
* Audience data for future projects
* Ability to package the film with merchandise and extra content for higher price points or to make purchasing direct to fan more attractive.
Most importantly, focus on long-term audience development since it is possible to transition audiences from one project to another if you reward them for their continued interest and keep them engaged.”

My take: fascinating reading. Hard numbers are hard to find.