The 2024 Cannes Film Festival by the Numbers: Leveling Up
I began going to the Cannes Film Festival back in 2017 while on my way to another event, Cannes Lions (which is going on this week). Cannes Lions is a whole other story, but I’m proud that my previous company, Audigent, continues to be a highly active sponsor of that event.
Now, years later, FilmHedge has given back to the community it grew out of by sponsoring and participating in the Cannes Festival for the third year. We’ll continue to do so as long as the organizers continue to allow for platinum VIP badges and sponsors of events at the Marche Du Film.
Here’s a quick summary of what FilmHedge did this year to contribute to the Cannes Film Festival:
FilmHedge performs many financial services and functions for the greater Film and TV production industry. Most importantly we collect an incredible amount of data, and use that data to inform ourselves and other financial groups. Even if we are the ultimate financiers of a deal, the deals we underwrite and conduct financial analysis on are critical to our business. This year we underwrote 13% of all films that were screened at Cannes (combined in-competition and out-of-competition screenings as tracked by the Cannes committees).
This financial data (credit-ratings, interest rates, budgets, and other financial insights) are anonymized and used to help inform terms and deals for our partners. It can also be useful info whenever groups want to look back to see how the financial decisions made early in the life of a film production affect its performance and profitability later, once released. Thus, deals underwritten by the staff at FilmHedge are important to us.
The other reason it’s important is because it helps us manage our relationships in the industry. We were happy to connect with a number of Producers screening whom we worked with tirelessly to try to close deals with even if they eventually found other ways of getting their projects closed. We don’t ask for any formal credit for those deals, we’re just happy to be supportive and remain a funding resource for future projects by those same teams.
Congrats to all those who screened, glad to play a small part of your respective journeys to the silver screen!
The FilmHedge team sponsored and held workshops at the Producer’s Club, a central point for the producers attending the Marche du Film.
We’re always happy to support our friends at Winston Baker each year by backing their Film Finance Forum and participating in any relevant panels. This year was no different. Thanks to our guests, representatives from FifthThird Bank, WME, Sky Cinema and Media Capital Technologies, who joined a great panel on the changing landscape of film finance and media capital.
FilmHedge also welcomed 20+ producers and other folks from the industry as our guests at the conference this year, guaranteeing they had access to some very special events, parties, and screenings.
Thanks to all who made this year special.
See you next year!
