The movie speaks for itself, the question you must negotiate now is the $ question. It can be quite hard to deal with since artist are rarely businessman. It really depends of the distributor though, your script & movie will speak in first time for yourself.

A script will likely give you some money but you'll have hard time to negotiate a % based on the fictive sales a remake could do. They'll just give you something in exchange for either a X years contract for them to hold onto the script (to be the only one who can have the rights to make it as a film). Do know also that sometime they just buy it for 1-6 months a very small price to study "if" they could produce it into a film. In case it fails, you'll get the rights to sell it to someone else after that period.

For the film now: If you are in the US then, it's likely they'll give you a fix amount of money (seems very pleasing at first) but you won't get anything more out unless previous contract specify otherwise but then they could simply refuse or has new one to be made. If you are in somewhere else, discussion can be quite open ranging from a fixed bid to a more open solution based on the sales it'll make in theater but your chances here are very limited for several reason: You do not have a name I believe like Ridley Scott, I also believe you won't be the investor into the distribution to make film copies, marketing... which can be very expansive (something people rarely speaks about but it costs quite a lot to publish a film to make it into at least a hundred theaters in your country, despite the fact digital reduced quite a lot the cost).

I seriously suggest to hold on a fixed bid for this one if you at least want to make money because in case the film doesn't work in theater, you won't get a $ back. Don't aim too low just for the sake of having your movie into theater, just think of what it did cost you and expect that amount of money to come back in your pocket with a bit of extra.

Then again, the most important thing with a distributor/producer relationship is that both sides are good listener.

In case I'm wrong, please correct me, I'm a director and dop, I don't make contract, I sign them. It's just what I remembered my producers told me.

@maxr Thanks man! Hopefully I can put up some tutorials later on regarding the process of filming it.

@Gardner Congrats. Please let us know when it's available to watch - hopefully in theaters. Perhaps you might seek out someone to professionally represent you in the process of selling your film.

@matt_gh2 I'm not celebrating yet but I definitely will! Who knows there may be some film critics in the forums.

Be warned that once you send them material, you should have no expectations of receiving even the most basic courtesy from this woman or anyone else in the company. This means you may never hear from them again, no matter what you do. These companies want to be in possession of material, but possessing it is often the end of their business with you.

So as already advised: provide material only when you're ready, and when it's ready to be seen -- and preferably in a public forum, like a film festival. You don't want to give them privileged access, if you can avoid it, because they know at that point you have no other options. And absolutely don't wait around by the phone, if you do send something. It's too easy to lose your life, waiting for people in this business.

@jrd that works for the script only. Don't publish the film into a public platform otherwise they won't buy it since it is considered as a release. Don't worry they are not going to get away with it just like that, it is copyrighted. As long as you haven't signed for anything, they can do nothing with it.

Keep in mind they may not be your best buyer but if you find none, just go for it. It is useless to wait 10 years to find someone who will buy it at a better price (and usually the longer you wait, the harder it is), don't be in rush, but don't wait years to find someone either. They are interested, that's enough for you right now. Just show them the final product.

What @DouglasHorn said.

the trailer looks great!

sorry, this might be a really stupid question (and if it's off-topic or irrelevant, feel free to delete the post), but is it possible to put your film up for free online (vimeo, etc...) and ask for donations?

and even if you don't make much, you might become really well-known from having a lot of views and then for subsequent films you will be made offers more easily? if the distributor path doesn't work out first, i mean.

or a lot of first-time authors self-publish their books. there is no equivalent to this in the film industry?

I've written about this a bit on my blog, but one big difference that has occurred recently is that once, if you had a film that only got shitty offers from midlevel distributors, you needed to take those offers and hope for the best because there wasn't really any other game in town. Now, however, we've finally reached a time where a VOD (plus possibly limited theatrical using Tugg etc) self-release can make more money for the filmmakers than a mid-level traditional release. (However, the primary reason for this is that it is extremely common for mid-level distributors to rip off small producers and misreport or simply refuse to pay on time or at all.) So at least now, filmmakers have a better option than taking these horrible deals (I could write about ways that filmmakers get ripped off for pages.) and can decline them and still do at least as good of a release in many respects, plus retain the license fees for themselves rather than seeing the distribs pocket it all.

@DouglasHorn Didn't the guys who did "Blair witch" get screwed by distributors?

@Gardner - Perhaps they did. I don't know. I don't think the Blair Witch is a good model for any filmmaker to look to, though. It was a total outlier. You're better off seeing what happens to numerous indie films like yours that have no "stars" (to a distrib's way of thinking) and are filmed on a low budget. You can learn a lot on forums more related to filmmaking but long story short, it's tough to get a deal that makes you much money. There's an axiom in filmmaking that you never see anything more than the initial payment. And today, distributors are not offering initial payments. So...

I do definitely agree that "No deal is better than a bad deal." Many filmmakers take the bad deal in the end because 1) they don't know any better; 2) there's an ego element in saying that your film is in distribution with so and so company; 3) they don't know what else to do; 4) their investors push for any deal; or 5) they know it's bad but they want to be done with it and even a bad deal closes the books on the project so they can move on.

If it were me, and I thought I had a "little indie that could" then I would go hard on the top film festival route (Toronto, Sundance, Berlinale, Cannes) It's a hard road but it's about the only way to get a true indie seen as a valuable asset. Otherwise these distribs just see you as a one-off deal to fill their sales channel that month and you won't hear much from them in the future.

@babypanda - Surely, every filmmaker out there promises themselves that they will make the marketing push that will make their film a success. So why can't they?

It's nearly impossible to market your film yourself unless you are acting as the distributor. When my first film came out, the distributor totally shut us out of all the decisions. We could have done a much better job at a lower cost on the key art, marketing copy, etc. I was calling and emailing them begging to get review copies to two major entertainment magazines where our team had secured interest for at least a mention and possibly a review. Either would have made a substantial impact in our sales. Nada!

Things are a little bit better today since producers can run their own social media campaigns (and for me, I know better and would trust the distrib to do its job less that I once did). However, you can really only do so much marketing without money. To be more successful, you need to either bring in some dowery in the form of a P&A fund for releasing the film--and be savvy enough to get a lot of control (not just "consultation") in exchange--or you need to get a revenue corridor so you can afford to continue your marketing efforts. That's very hard to do.