By David Davis | Tuesday, May 01, 2007
FMV Entertainment News

I was speaking recently with a long-term business associate who gave me an interesting statistic. One studio in town writes 200,000 checks a year to profit or residual participants in its feature films and television series. WOW. Doing some simple math (5 times 200,000!) means that the studios write over one million checks per year to participants, most of these checks for certainly less than $1,000. Isn't there a better way? There has to exist an opportunity for the industry to save tens and possibly hundreds of millions of dollars over time in simplifying this administrative nightmare. Perhaps we can start with saving post office costs by sending statements by PDF and using wire transfers instead of cutting checks?

One way in which this can be accomplished is the creation of a market for buying and selling film participations and residuals. One such company involved in creating such a market is Content Partners, LLC (http://www.contentllc.com/) run by industry veterans Steve Kram and Steve Blume, with board members including visionary thinkers Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner. The two Steves have a real good sense for what the future holds for the value of future filmed entertainment revenue streams giving participants who have the inclination a market to monetize future value today. I expect we will see a series of market alternatives for participants and residual players in the future.