Producing

Hi Rafaella Biscayn. There is a Stage 32 Cannes meetup where our community will be there networking. You can see it here and register: https://www.stage32.com/meetups/2070/Cannes-Film-Festival-2026-Stage-32-...

This is our 13th year as the Education Partner of Cannes and the Marche. And we couldn't be more proud. As Sandra said, our meetup is open, but we have much more to announce soon. Look forward to seeing you there, Rafaella Biscayn

David Weinberg, absolutely, attaching directors and cast is the toughest part right now. Managers want offers, investors want fully packaged projects, and the market has shifted. The upside is exactly what you said: with so many people between jobs, strong, well‑planned indie projects have a real shot at getting traction.

Darrell Pennington, that’s a powerful realization. Likewise, I come from the same field, so I see it as a real advantage. The discipline, structure, and way of approaching challenges translate directly into the creative process. It’s great to watch you leaning into that and letting it strengthen your work.

Vesna Floric, what a situation, thank you for bringing this to the community’s attention. Like in any business, we find all kinds of people, and it’s important to stay alert and protect our work and our boundaries.

I’m really grateful for your advice here. As a Stage 32 moderator, I’ll share this with the Head of Community so they can look into the profile and be aware of what happened. Your warning helps keep the space safer for everyone.

Andrew Dymond, this is such a grounded way of describing what it really means to lead an indie company today. Keeping a small team alive, loyal, and motivated in a shifting industry is no small feat; consistency is a reflection of your leadership. And you’re absolutely right: adaptability and uncompromising quality control, especially in post, are what separate sustainable companies from the ones that burn out.

Balancing survival with joy in the work is the real art. It’s inspiring to see you holding both with such clarity. Thank you for sharing.

Hi Vesna Floric, I want to let you know that the account was investigated and removed. Thank you again for the warning. If you or any member ever runs into an account of suspicion or concern, please report it to the Support Team at Support@Stage32.com or to Ashley Smith at Community@Stage32.com. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing. This is very interesting.

This is such valuable intel, thank you for sharing it. Knowing that even selection at an Oscar-qualifying festival adds real credibility changes how we should approach submissions. Since programmers decide fast and presentation matters as much as content, what's the one piece of your submission package (logline, synopsis, screener) you're most uncertain about, and how will you test it before sending?

Lillian BAjsalevowicz, how dare you! You took my money and you didn't do anything! How dare you try to trash my name or my father's name! You don't even know me and you try to do that to me.!How dare you?! I'm new at this filmmaking and you tried to take advantage of me and then you try to turn it on me! How dare you?!

Alexia Melocchi This is incredibly insightful especially the point that “distribution determines destiny.”

I think a lot of emerging filmmakers focus so much on making the film that they don’t fully think about how it will actually reach an audience.

Also really resonated with the idea that relationships build careers more than projects. That feels very true even at the early stages.

Thanks for sharing this there’s a lot here that people need to hear.

I completely agree with all of these and can especially resonate with #3 (Distribution determines destiny). We live in an era of "content glut." Making the film is now the "easy" part (relatively speaking); making sure it isn't buried in an algorithm or left sitting on a hard drive is the real task. If a producer isn't thinking about the delivery platform while they're still in pre-production, they're essentially flying a plane without landing gear.

Another one I’d like to add is: Learn the Data. In the past, a legendary producer’s intuition could move mountains. Today, platforms and financiers look at engagement metrics, social following, and historical data points before cutting a check.

The reality is, you aren't just selling a story; you’re selling a de-risked investment. If you can't speak the language of analytics (i.e. understanding "comp" titles not just creatively, but demographically) you’re at a massive disadvantage.

This is a great breakdown — especially the emphasis on distribution and how early those realities start shaping a project.

What I’ve been noticing more and more is that many projects don’t even make it far enough for those external factors to become the deciding force.

They start to lose coherence earlier — during development — when the internal structure isn’t strong enough to carry the weight you’re describing.

Because once you start introducing real constraints (budget, casting, market positioning), the story either adapts…

or it fractures.

And that fracture usually isn’t visible at the surface level — it shows up in small ways: decisions that stop feeling inevitable, tension that no longer compounds, characters that react instead of drive.

So in a way, a lot of what you’re describing externally tends to expose what was already unstable internally.

Curious how often you see that — projects that technically “check all the boxes” on the producing side, but still don’t hold once they’re put under real pressure.

Love your analogy Grady! Of course, I'm waiting for my WWII project to take flight!

Grady raised something that deserves more attention. The shift from intuition to data in greenlighting decisions is not just changing how projects get funded. It is changing which stories get told. When platforms and financiers evaluate comp titles demographically, they are building a model of what the audience wants based on what the audience already chose. That creates a feedback loop. The projects that look safest on paper are the ones most likely to feel familiar on screen.

What gets lost in that loop is the project that does not have a clean comp because it is doing something new. The math says it is risky. But the audience is not actually asking for more of the same. They are asking for something that surprises them in a way that still feels grounded.

Radoslav made a sharp point about stories fracturing under external pressure. I have seen this happen in real systems too. Not just in film. In large technology programs where the internal architecture looked solid until real world constraints hit. The ones that survived were not the ones with the best plans. They were the ones built to absorb pressure without losing coherence.

That is what separates a producible script from a good one. Not whether it checks the boxes but whether it holds together when the boxes start shifting.

Eric Charran Bingo.

The gap you are describing is not between good material and bad evaluation. It is between the person who can see what a script is doing and the room that needs a shared language to discuss it.

Structural data does not replace the read. It gives the person who trusts their read something to point to that the room can engage with without it being purely subjective.

That does not solve the political problem you are describing. But it changes what the conversation in the room looks like. Here's hoping fingers crossed

TL:DR

E Langley TLDR Version : Folks try to pitch "success" before getting the structure of the story right.

Vijay Anand At DSP we greenlight scripts that first are original and effective, with a strong voice. And does it align with our own brand and artistic objectives? We don't ever look at coverage - we believe coverage is only use by incompetent producers (and I mean that in the nicest way) or for those who literally have thousands of scripts to filter through (and there are not many of those people). Why? Because coverage is traditionally written by someone who has never sold a script, maybe not even written one, and has no experience at all in production, distribution or anywhere else in the film cycle. So by definition those who write coverage are unqualified to make any assessment that they are being relied upon to make, and I question the competence of any producer who relies on it for a 6 or 7 or 8 figure decision. And increasingly, it's being done by AI, which by definition cannot assess anything other than grammar and formatting, neither of which have any actual connection to storytelling. Also, we're making the decisions, we're going to read the script before we do that. Comps are a marketing issue, even before finding investors. It's not a reason to greenlight a script, it's a way to get your head around packaging and marketing it, IMO.

Shadow Dragu-Mihai Thank you for sharing your process. That was insightful. Thank you!

The part that never gets talked about is that most evaluation systems are designed to reduce risk for the person making the decision not to find the best material. Coverage exists so someone can point to a document when a project fails. Comps exist so someone can explain their bet in language a room full of executives already understands. The actual quality of the writing becomes almost secondary at that point. The scripts that break through usually do it because someone with enough authority decided to trust their own read over the process. That is the gap no evaluation system has figured out how to close.

Hey Chidera Emmanuel, thanks for posting. I also suggest making the same request in the Your Stage lounge, where you will have a larger audience from different areas of filmmaking. I hope this is useful to you.

thanks u , It's really useful for me I appreciate @sandra correria

You are welcome :)

Fantastic. Honing one's pitch, having it ready at a moments notice is highly valuable. You never know when the opportunity to pitch will arise, and you should be ready.

I couldn't agree more Jack! Will you be attending?

Hello, everyone! We're excited to start this lab on Saturday, April 18!

By the end of this interactive lab, you will walk away with a clear, confident, professionally structured five-minute pitch vetted by an international executive and ready to use at Cannes, markets, festivals, and high-level meetings. If you are investing the time and money to be there, this is how you make sure you walk in prepared, positioned, and ready to turn five minutes into real momentum!

Once you register, you will have direct contact to Alexia via email. Alexia has placed over 100 films in the last five years and has worked with companies including Lionsgate, STX, Lakeshore, TF1, The Asylum, and Mister Smith.

See you this Saturday! And please email us at edu@stage32.com if you have any questions or concerns. :)

Thank you for organizing this event. See you all this Saturday and i hope i can meet you guys on Cannes!

Lindbergh Hollingsworth Me too. I wonder why the quick deal, it's not like the WGA to be first in that line. There's some speculation that the deal includes some kind of contribution to the WGA P&H fund, which apparently is in trouble. The WGA has the highest employer contribution to P&H in the industry already - over 24% total. So their fund shouldn't be suffering. It doesn't sound right. Just saying.

What? No sequel to the writers strike of 2023? I hope this doesn't mean that the industry is learning from its mistakes and changing its behavior. That's a dangerous precedent to set.

Richard Buzzell I doubt anyone's learned anything. In fact, the WGA, with the highest employer P&H contributions among the unions, may have caved early because... somehow... their pension plans are in trouble... The deal apparently involves an injection into it. That all smells very funny. Just saying, there's speculation happening. However, it is also a different moment for everyone. We'll see what SAGAftra does - whether they extend the sell-out of their membership over AI that they allowed last time or not... I haven't heard a peep about DGA positions yet but I might have missed it.

Your pension read is the kind of detail people will be missing for months. That is the story hiding behind the quick close. The public framing always leans on residuals and minimums. The real pressure point is usually upstream in the P and H math where nobody wants to look.

On the AI piece, the thing the last round got wrong was treating AI as a single thing that could be fenced off with one clause. It is not a single thing. There is training data. There is tool use inside the writers room. There is generative output in the finished product. And there is synthetic performance. Each of those has a completely different leverage profile and the contracts keep trying to staple them together.

What I would watch in this round is whether any of the language starts to split those layers out. If it does, that is a sign the negotiators are finally talking to engineers. If the language stays blurry, whatever they sign is going to collapse the second a studio finds a clever interpretation. Which will happen faster than anyone wants to admit.

Eric Charran Good points. My observation on AI is that the studios at least have been looking at it, gen-AI especially because most all other machine learning is supportive and technical. Which Gen-AI is as well being in essence just a sophisticated animation tool with enormous IP issues surrounding it. Those issues per se don't affect the writers much more today than they did last time around. But overall I think the industry understands much better that the issues are.