FilmFestivals.com Profile on FilmHedge CEO
Jon Gosier is the founder and CEO of FilmHedge, a lending company that uses financial technology solutions to finance movies with up to $20 million per production.
What brings you to the Cannes Film Festival?
“This year, our company is one of the sponsors for a number of events here: the Producer’s Club, the Film Finance Forum, and VIP access to the red carpet itself,” Gosier responded. FilmHedge has participated in the festival for the past three years as a sponsor. “We hope to return in the future,” he continued.
Can you tell us a bit more about your company?
“FilmHedge is the fastest-growing lender to film and TV producers globally,” Gosier answered. “I usually always like to say we’re the fastest-growing lender to Hollywood, but we finance globally.” FilmHedge is a technology company. “The technology that we use that differentiates us is the way we collect data, the way we make use of data, and the way that we share that data with our financial partners.” This, he explained, gives the companies confidence in FilmHedge and their willingness to provide capital and partnerships.
When and how did FilmHedge get started?
FilmHedge was legally formed in February of 2020. However, Gosier began the groundwork and idea generation for the company when he attended the Cannes Film Festival for the first time in 2017.
Gosier explained, “I had always wanted to get into film. I wanted to better understand it.” So he came to Cannes in 2017 just as a spectator; he wasn’t producing films. He loved it so much that he returned in 2018 and 2019. “By the time 2020 came around,” Gosier explained, “I knew a lot of the sorts of gaps in the industry because I had been meeting with producers, directors, and filmmakers over the previous couple of years. I got to know the industry really well before starting this company, and things took off from there.”
The company started about two weeks before the world shut down. “We’re a covid company. In many ways, that helped us, because the demand for new content went through the roof. A lot of new content these days is financed independently. We’re an independent financier. So it was sort of the right moment at the right time for the birth of this company.”
What are you doing next after the festival ends?
“Me and some friends, we hope to go to the Grand Prix in Monaco and then just go back home to get back to work.”
What do you hope the next few years will look like for FilmHedge?
“We think this is going to be a period of tremendous growth,” Gosier explained. “At this conference, we forged a number of partnerships. One of which was actually done before we got here: a very large financial partner who is giving us enough capital to grow into, what I would say, the upper tier of the financial groups in this industry.” Gosier continued, “The speed at which we’ll be able to deploy that capital is in our ability to help producers by financing their projects; I think this year was probably the most productive Cannes Festival that I’ve ever been to.”
He went on to explain that there were four projects in the festival this year that FilmHedge had been a part of underwriting. “Underwriting,” he explained, “is reviewing the financials and trying to decide if we could back those projects.” Ultimately, FilmHedge did not back most of those projects. But, Gosier explained, “it was good to know that four of the projects that came through our walls at FilmHedge made it to competition at Cannes. It is hugely exciting, validating for our team, and encouraging for what the future holds. We look forward to coming back again to Cannes in 2025!”
