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October 6

"Foreign Distribution Sales" of movies

I'm trying to understand how film distribution works after having read about the production of the movie "Shine a Light" (I'm working on the German Wikipedia article about the movie). But I don't understand all the given credits for that movie (see "Company Information"). I already read a lot about distribution rights and distributors for theaters and video/DVD/TV. I understand now that distribution rights are sold by the production company and not necessarily to companies that distribute the movies themselves, understand that these distribution rights can be hold for the "domestic" market or for "foreign" markets. So I think I basically understand the credits "Foreign Theatrical Distributor" vs "Foreign Distribution Rights". But I can't find out what this entry about "Fortissimo Films - Foreign Distribution Sales" (Fortissimo Films are the only in the list with that credit) means. The website of the movie says: "The film is being distributed in the U.S. by Paramount Classics and sold internationally by Fortissimo Films." The German version on TV opens with "A Fortissimo presentation". What does it mean, the film is sold by Fortissimo? Fortissimo isn't the distributor as it seems, but what do they do, what do they sell exactly? And who has the copyright then, Fortissimo or the foreign distributors or still Paramount? That's so complicated, please help! --Miss-Sophie (talk) 19:24, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Distributed" is just a fancy word for "sold", so, yes, it sounds to me (without investigating any of your links) that Fortissimo is the "foreign" distributor, selling/leasing/renting the film everywhere outside the US. They wouldn't own the copyright; they just entered into an agreement with Paramount and/or the production company allowing them to sell the movie in X, Y, and Z territories in exchange for a certain amount of cash plus some royalty. Comet Tuttle (talk) 23:54, 6 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's a difference between selling a film into a territory and distributing it within that territory. A film distributor either owns theaters (cinemas) or works with cinema owners to show the film; but to do this they need to purchase the rights to distribute a film in a given territory. A company will often sell the rights to different territories separately, and particularly with indie films that don't have a studio and established distribution system, the production company will engage a sales agent to find buyers (distributors, TV stations, etc) and get a good price in the different territories; this saves the producers from having to negotiate directly with distributors around the world. This page discusses the distribution process, and explains the difference between sales agents and distributors. --Colapeninsula (talk) 09:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I have to disagree. The distributors sell the film within their territories. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much Colapeninsula, "sales agent" was the key word that was missing! After searching for a word combination of "Fortissimo", "Shine a Light" and "sales agent" I found this: "Fortissimo Films is the international sales agent." [1] and "the film is being sold by Fortissimo Films in foreign territories at the American Film Market, which opens today. Fortissimo executives Michael J. Werner and Wouter Barendrecht hosted a bevy of international distributors en route to the AFM at the Beacon, including buyers from Australia, Japan, France, South Africa and South Korea." [2]--Miss-Sophie (talk) 22:52, 9 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]