Who will get rich if The Age of Stupid is a smash hit?
John has made some of the most high profile documentaries of recent years. ‘One Day in September’ won the Oscar for Best Documentary and ‘Live Forever’ destroyed several forests in press coverage. So you might imagine he is rich. But when those funding bodies pay you to make a film for them, they also wrap up the finances. First, they insist that the initial money taken by the film goes to repay their investment. Which is often the only money that comes in. And second, if the film does repay all it’s production costs and goes on to make a profit, guess who gets most of it? For example, ‘Touching the Void’ is financially the most successful British doc of all time. It took an estimated US $10 million at the box office, none of which has filtered down to the filmmakers. It’ll be a different story on The Age of Stupid. Everybody who works (above a minimum) or invests in the film will own a slice of the pie. So if The Age of Stupid is the smash hit we’re dreaming of, the people who will be
