Should domestic and Foreign Sales be handled by separate people?

I've been getting this question a lot lately. The short anwser is YES, you should have separate people/entities handling foreign and domestic sales.

In courting domestic and international distribution, here are a few scenarios that could happen:

1. Your film gets picked up by one of the majors in which case they will take Worldwide rights and you won't have to worry about separate people selling the foreign and domestic rights to your film -- they will all be gone in one big deal. While this may sound like a disadvantage to you the filmmaker, keep in mind we're talking about one of the MAJORS picking up your film, which means you will be getting a theatrical release and which means you should consider yourself lucky to get bought out all at once and not have to worry about piece-mealing sales of your film together.

2. The second scenario that could take place is that your film gets picked up by a U.S distributor, and leaves foreign rights for you on table to deal with yourself. This is also a case where you should consider yourself lucky -- hey, you just got a U.S distribution deal! And now all you have to do is find a decent foreign sales ageny to handle the foreign sales.

3. The third scenario that could take place is a foreign sales agency picks up your film and offers to do all the foreign sales, and leaves the U.S rights on the table for you to sell yourself. This is also a good scenario in that the U.S rights are the most valuable of the lot, and you can then go and shop those yourself to U.S distributors and save the commissions that a foreign sales agent would charge you. By the way, if you get picked up by a foreign sales agent and they want to include U.S rights in your deal, I would advise to take them out of the deal and sell those rights yourself.

4. A fourth scenario that could take place is that a Producers Rep offers to pick up your film for U.S rights (and find a distributor for it), and leaves foreign rights with you. In this case, check the credentials of the Producers Rep to make sure they've got lots of U.S deals under the belts -- these days, especially if you're going for the straight-to-dvd or straight-to-cable market, you can do that yourself without the help of a producers rep.

Obviously your first choice is to get picked up by one of the majors and get bought out and make your money back all at once. However as that is getting more and more rare these days with independent films, my personal recommendation to you is to 1) shop the U.S deal yourself and save on the commissions of agents and reps, and 2) find a reputable foreign sales agent to do the foreign sales for you, since those are more difficult to handle than the U.S deal.

Good luck~ and email me with any questions!