In 1975, George Lucas started his epic Star Wars, however, people were at odds about the movie’s popularity and instant saleability. He went to Twientieth Century Fox, with his concept and they approved it. He also told them he would take a paycut in exchange for a full rights to his toys he created to sell on the market. Fox said to him, sure, keep your shitty toys (in other words, of course..). What they didn’t know, is that his toys went on to gross more than 10 times the movie made and with having exclusive rights from now till eternity, he would make 100 times more than any of his movies with the toys. Eventually, distributors smartened up and began to take advantage of the auxillary market ( toys, games, t-shirts, etc…)
There is a doubt that you can do this and outsmart a distributor, but you may know now, the market value of toys.Why not make your own toy of a character in your film?
You may be able to convince a distributor to distribute your film with a little buzz marketing on your part.
Sure it may seem outrageous at first, but simply do this. Picture in your head marketing your characters, and pick a character from your film, a main character perhaps. Then draw a schematic drawing of a bite size variety. Then, look up toy manufacturers in the US, and contact with a few to get pricing of your character for 500 of them. Then, when you receive the toys, hire a crew on craigslist.com to hand out advertising of your film to come hand out your toys to little children. The media will eat this up!
Have your crew go to Grand Central in Manhattan for example, (or any big city will do) to have them distribute your character toy and advertorials about your movie. At a minimal price, about one thousand, you have created an audience. Bring this to the distributor table as your marketing efforts.
Examples of action figures now on the market : Spiderman, Batman, Harry Potter, Transformers.. You do know that these are popular..but why not yours? What you might think never would happen, George Lucas made it happen..and what is best is that it doesn’t even have to be a “action figure” just a person, as a collectible. It will sell.
Please reply to me, Jonathan with any questions atmoviedistributionfacts@gmail.com or add a comment.
Movie Distribution Facts 