“If you can’t sell your film to Germany, don’t bother making it.”
That was the blunt, perhaps surprising message from Millennium Films President (and ex-Miramax and Warner Independent exec)Mark Gill at a conference Monday (Nov. 12) on the importance of the German market to Hollywood.
“Two thirds of the box office these days comes from the international market…And Germany is one of the biggest international territories,” Gill told a packed house at the Hotel Casa Del Mar. “If you are never going to sell to Germany, you should never be making that film.”
China, with its booming box office and promise of billions in newequity funding, may dominate the headlines but the expert panel brought together by the German American Business Association said Germany remains a key element in putting together film financing, particularly as Germany’s economy has held up while much of the rest of Europe suffers.
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