financing season two

POSTED BY: Alfred
UPDATED: Friday, January 23, 2004 20:13
VIEWED: 10758
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ALFRED

Thursday, January 22, 2004 4:10 PM

From the civilian.com website:

"A film IPO is a public offering of a special purpose company formed specifically to produce a feature film. Civilian film IPOs are expected to range in budget from $3 million to $25 million and encompass a wide range of genres. Scripts, producers and talent will be outlined in the offering prospectus. This information allows investors to make informed decisions based on the producer and director's track records, as well as the project’s originality and box office potential."

I sent them an email requesting more information.

I would expect ME to do most of the heavy lifting around establishing the LLC et al. We would be the money people and they would be the executive producer.

Thank you to everyone for helping to hash out this idea. Any chance of passing this thread to Joss?

Alfred

JASONZZZ

Thursday, January 22, 2004 4:39 PM

Hero:

what are the good and bad reasons to selling shares for a company that will film "season 2"?

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:
Originally posted by BobSunCorp:
Does anyone know of any sites/groups, etc that Joss actually visits? Then we can add a link and suggestion that he or someone else intimately involved takes a look at all this.

First of all I am all in favor of efforts to revive the show.

However, in my legal opinion, this idea is a nutty as a three dollar bill.

You want to start a production company, fine. But selling share in a company whose sole objective the the filming of Season 2. Frankly I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Next thing you'll be advocating us all moving to China and making the show there for 10 cents on the dollar and copyrights be damned. Hmmm...it would get more chinease people into the cast. We could arrange for Chinease intelligence to kidnap Joss and the original cast.

H

Haken needs a new development system. Donate.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=5&t=3283

HERO

Thursday, January 22, 2004 8:47 PM

Starting your proposed company is neither good nor bad, but like everything else in the legal field, its complicated.

Here's a few off the top of my head.
1. You would need a core of initial investors to incorporate the company...or an agent willing to bear some risk.
2. Intial capital investment.
3. If your gonna sell shares you gotta deal with the SEC.
4. You need a board of directors (not TV show directors). You also need corporate officers. These things require shareholder meetings, a charter, and a lawyer to make sure your doing it all correctly.
5. You need the TV rights to Firefly.
6. I think the $50 million in costs is a pretty steep hurdle. I also think thats a conservative figure.
7. Essentially you a starting a production company, so if somebody working there knows something about running a production company, thats probably a good thing.

On the UP side:
1. There is probably a market. The show could be easily marketed in foriegn countries and to the Sci Fi Channel or Spike TV if not real a network.
2. Costs could be minimized by filming in other countries as well. I'd recommend New Zealand or Australia, but maybe Canada.
3. We could spin off Firefly merchandise and expand into other genres such as Role Playing, Computer Games, and novels...not to mention calanders, T-Shirts, Jayne Hats, Brown coats, etc.
4. Spin off series. There's are whole seasons and Little House and Bonanza to steal plots from.

I think that with the right people, resources, and execution it could work. Are we those people? Some of us probably could be.

That being said, Serenity Inc. is just $50 million and a copyright away.

Personally I think we stand a better chance of winning a class action suit against FOX for emotional distress.

Now a charitable organization to coordinate the DVD for Troops fund, website costs, fanclub activities, and militent anti-FOX TV operations, that could be done. If idiots like PETA (no offense to any PETAers, but they do life too seriously) can run a charitable then so can we.

H

JASONZZZ

Friday, January 23, 2004 12:01 AM

What are the details of the exact rights that Fox have? What about Universal?

I don't know what it is, but I am thinking of something like "Fox has TV rights for the US with only the first Nth episodes for certain time period, etc, etc." Or is it "Fox owns the TV rights to all episodes of Firefly (produced and yet to be produced) from here until eternity in the entire Universe" ?

Like Fireflyfans.net?
Haken needs a new development system. Donate.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=5&t=3283

HERO

Friday, January 23, 2004 4:22 PM

I think we should make our own show.

We could call it Lightning Bug.

Instead of a Western style space show with chinease influences it would be a space show with frontier themes and Japanease influences.

Ship could be called Harmony (named after Harmony Hill a tragic battle fought by during the war between the Union and the Free Spacers).

Captain Reynold Malcombs
First officer Cleo (she looks like a Cleo)
Pilot Shaw
Mechanic Kelly
Mercenary John
Novel the monk
Doctor Simone and her insane little psychic brother Tributary.
Anari the B-girl, bag, bawd, bimbo, blower, broad, call girl, camp follower, cat, chicken, chippie, concubine, courtesan, fallen woman, floozy, harlot, hooker, hostess, hustler, loose woman, midnight cowboy, model, moll, nymphomaniac, painted woman, party girl, pickup, pink pants, pro, scarlet woman, slut, streetwalker, strumpet, tart, tomato, tramp, trollop, white slave, whore, or working girl.

There. Now we don't even need the copyright.

H

KASUO

Friday, January 23, 2004 4:53 PM

"I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see one. And there's Magnetbox, and Sorny."

----
"Let's moon 'em!"

BOCMAN

Friday, January 23, 2004 8:13 PM

This is a great core of ideas.
I would however suggest that perhaps we don't think of financing the whole series but we could be responsible for a portion of the production. Let's say 20%. We sell shares to raise enough to cover a percentage.
And we get.

1. Discount on DVD.
2. Perhaps our names as contributors could be put somewhere on the CD. Easter Egg type thing or in the tittles at the end of each episode where we scroll by 50 to 100 names (quickly). 14 episodes 1400 names. Pick the first 1400 contributors or whatever.
3. Perhaps some characters names (bad or good characters) could be chosen the contributors list and used in an episode.
4. If we as shareholders and the Series was sold or went into reruns, and made money, we could/should receive dividends. (This is not the main reason I would contribute but if someone buys 3 share and someone else has 1 share then there needs to be something proportional going to the 3 shares contributor as opposed to the 1 share contributor.

Once we have a list of pledged contributors and it has to fairly big, we could then approach Joss. With 20% or whatever of the financing in place, the studio might see real interest coming from the FireFly community and that should really help Joss sell it.

However, 20 percent might be enough to get the interest level up at the studios, which own the rights. If they think there is enough interest but want to make their 80% investment bucks back first, we would prob have to agree to something like, all production costs and expenses on their part would be paid back first before any dividends are paid out.

This thing is too big for any one (FireFly) group to finance independently. Which means we would need to reach out beyond this site and contact other FireFly Fan sites around the would.

Easy to get started, we should start a pledge drive and start signing up people right away. Once that list shows promise we would approach Joss with the idea and see how he feels about it.

Our goal here is to find a FireFly voice that has clout and shows that we are serious. With a percentage of production covered, Joss may find it much easier to sell!

Just an idea.
Put me down for 2-5 Shares depending on final cost.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

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