Resources: Will any of these 200+ companies finance your movie?

And are these the companies that the agencies will submit your project to?

what is wealth anyways? other than having enough to give away….

I’ve contemplated whether to share this list with you or not.

Guess what side won? Will I be breaking a secret Producers’ Code Of Conduct by sharing it with you now? When I asked earlier, everyone seemed to want it, so…

Many producers compile such financier lists, but I don’t recall one ever being shared. Well, I did (granted it was more about grants) but then again I seem to do that sort of thing by some quirk of nature.

Why don’t other filmmakers share all their secrets? Why don’t they share their financier lists? Aren’t we in this together? How does withholding such information help?

People tend to think compiling such a list and keeping it to themselves make them more powerful. Producers gain status based on the perception they can do things others can’t. But anyone can submit a project. Sure, maybe everyone can’t submit a project well, and perhaps there lies the difference.

Of course, in the best of worlds, you’d never submit a project to anyone that you hadn’t already built a relationship with. And you can’t have a relationship if the other side isn’t willing to build one with you. So there’s that.

Ideally, you will find someone to help you with a relationship to any company you are submitting to before you reach out. That is one of the reasons people like to have an agency submit their project to prospective financiers — the agents presumably have put the time in to develop the relationship. They’d never pretend to have something they don’t, would they?

Some folks out there would tell you to not share a list like this as it might upset the agencies. I don’t agree. I think by you knowing that these companies are out there, it should strengthen your belief in the benefit of working with an agency. There’s so many and you need their help. But that’s me. Maybe they will blacklist me too! Maybe they already have…

Others will say don’t share your financier list because it is “not fair” to the companies. I think such an opinion assumes these companies will now be overwhelmed by submissions. I don’t think that will happen, and not just because I haven’t supplied email addresses or executive’s names. Clearly those finer details are never so hard to find as I get endless unsolicited submissions from folks who haven’t bothered to build a relationship with me first. You can find what you need. And you have to be willing to work for what you want, right?

The truth is I don’t know if any of these companies are actually still in the business of financing films. Their lights may be on, but is anyone really ever home anymore? Perhaps YOU can share your tales of submitting to them with the rest of US. Did they respond, and if so, how? Were they fast? Slow? Did they provide notes? Let me know in the comments. Let us know. Do you think they even read your project? I recently was involved on a film where I don’t think the “financiers” ever read the script.

Imagine if filmmakers had a report card on financiers… do you think it would lead to better behavior from the money lenders?

So why am I sharing this list? I do think you want one, and yeah, part of me always feels we should try to give people what they want… but we’ve seen where that gets us, right? I think many of you think having a list of financiers will help you get your film made.

I do think knowledge is power and transparency often initiates a fast track to better solutions. And I don’t think having this list and keeping it private helps me in any way. And I do want to lift the community as I think it could elevate our film culture, which remains a goal to see in my lifetime. And I can’t come up with a good reason not to….

In pondering “to do or not to do”, I asked you all for advice. Julian helped convince me to give you what you now have before you. Say “Thanks, Julian”.

This list does not include companies that I know to be in distribution, including international sales. That would be another list. But those already exist elsewhere. Maybe one of you can link to it below?

I also removed over a handful of wealthy individuals that don’t, to my knowledge, have ongoing companies, even when they have made multiple film investments, as it felt a bit personal to list them here. However if an individual had a company, including one that was their name, that made repeated film investments, I listed them here.

A few have hot links to their IMDB page. If you need something to do the next rainy day, perhaps you could provide the rest and send it to me, and I will repost (hint, hint). Imagine if we actually did joint projects like that — we could grow into something truly helpful to us all.

I do have two additional requests though… please let me know the companies I didn’t put on the list. And maybe we can start to build one that covers companies outside of the US too. Also let me know which companies are now dead; they drop like flies.

Oh, you might want to check out the WGA Unfair List before submitting to any of these companies: https://www.wga.org/employers/signatories/strike-unfair-list before submitting any project to any company….

200+ Film Finance Companies In The United States (unless otherwise noted)