Ed Pressman was one of Hollywood’s most impressive producers — a man who worked on films from American Psycho to The Crow to Wall Street to cult classics like The Phantom of the Paradise and Bad Lieutenant. His son Sam Pressman took over Pressman Films when his father died last year at 79, with bold ideas about how to keep making daring films.
One of those ideas is turning from the old-school financing methods of his father to a favorite practice of scrappy DIY filmmakers, crowdfunding. But why is a business known for making classics the old-fashioned way turning to online investors?
“To me it feels like a moment of great opportunity for independent film — with fewer films being produced by the studios and streamers it’s incumbent upon independent producers to help fill that void,” Pressman says.
It’s no secret that Hollywood, emerging from Covid and strikes, is unusually skittish lately about greenlighting new projects. Pressman sees crowdfunding as a way to break through the delays, and as an expansion of traditional approaches with which his father succeeded. He notes that Ed Pressman “was always looking for new and innovative ways to finance independent films.”
“We’ve raised money in a variety of different ways over the years, but this is the first time through a public offering,” Pressman tells us. “Our raise is motivated less by a need to raise the money, and more by a desire to pioneer new ways to capitalize independent film. We have a lot of traditional investors, but this is an opportunity for us to connect with a wider fan community with an interest in participating in financial upside from movie making.”
You can listen to our full interview with Sam Pressman on Simplecast, Apple or Spotify or wherever you get podcasts.
How the Pressman Film Fundraising Works
Using the Republic platform, Pressman Films seeks to raise $1.5 million to help develop six films — three based on existing intellectual property, and three based on new ideas. The minimum investment is $200.
While a few very smart and/or lucky investors get rich backing movies, Hollywood productions are infamous for a lack of transparency, and for losing investors’ money. As author Sam Wasson recently noted in the New York Times, “In terms of making fortunes, Wall Street laughs at Hollywood.”
Sam Pressman can’t guarantee investors will see a profit — because no one can — but his company is attempting to increase transparency. In its fundraising pitch, Pressman Films pledges that investors will receive payouts at three crucial points:
The company says when a film goes into production, investors will recoup the portion of their investment tied to the film, plus a 20% premium. And when the film completes filming, they will receive 15% of Pressman Film’s producer fee and 15% of any rights fee, the company says.
Investors will also get 100% of Pressman’s net profit share in all films from the slate until investors have made their money back, plus 8% compounded interest, according to the company. In other words, Pressman only takes money back after investors are paid back their investment and return.
“Once you get that money back, you will start getting 25% of Pressman’s net profits for these films in perpetuity,” the company’s fundraising site says.
Investor-Advocates
But Pressman hopes participants will not just be passive investors, but active advocates for their films, helping raise attention and excitement for them online. So that Redditor or TikToker you see hyping a Pressman film may also have a financial stake in its success.
“To me it feels like a moment of great opportunity for independent film — with fewer films being produced by the studios and streamers it’s incumbent upon independent producers to help fill that void,” Pressman says.
Pressman Films isn’t the first film business to invite fans to invest in films — LegionM, the company behind the Nicholas Cage film Mandy, is based on a participatory model. Pressman Films has a longer track record of making movies, while LegionM has been in the crowdfunding game longer. It was founded in 2016.
In our podcast talk with Sam Pressman, we cover a wide range of topics, including what it was like to grow up on films sets. He has especially strong memories of 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, which filmed in Australia when he was about 10.
“I think it was the most stressful, worst experience that my father had in producing,” Pressman recalls. “It was the only time he fired his director. It’s the only time he was banned from the set — by Marlon Brando.”
He also shares memories of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Danny DeVito’s City Hall, and tells us his parents wouldn’t let him near the set of American Psycho: “My mom wouldn’t even let me see the film when it came out,” he says.
Ed Pressman had hits and misses, but Sam Pressman said his father never let box-office failures stop him.
“Somehow, he just kind of persisted,” Sam Pressman says on the podcast. “He didn’t get too high, he didn’t get too low. … He was shy and reserved. There was a sweetness to his spirit that wouldn’t get beaten down even when things didn’t go his way.
“And maybe that was because there were always so many projects percolating and being juggled in his head — when something wasn’t working exactly how he wanted, there was the next thing to keep pushing forward.”
Lessons From The Crow
We also talked about a more recent box-office disappointment, this past summer’s new version of The Crow. The film was in development for years, and Ed Pressman, one of the producers, died the year before its release.
Sam Pressman says he’s a better producer because of the painful experience.
“I learned so much from the process of The Crow and my father was really, really, genuinely happy to see the movie finally finding its form. He was first sick and in the hospital right as we started principal production in Prague.
“I think losing my father during the journey was was the most intense experience, and fills the film with this emotion of loss that is kind of built into the story and the soul of the film, which has so much to do with with loss, going back to the graphic novel from James O’Barr.”
The Crow made him more determined to be hands-on in the future, he said — and a new fundraising model will help.
“I think in ways, you know, we were not driving the creative process because of the nature of the development deal, and I want to be able to have our team kind of more firmly in the trenches with the filmmaker throughout the development process. And that’s part of why this raise is so important. Because I really look at the films my father made as the treasure and as the great gift he leaves us as a company, and also culturally, I think the films have had great significance.
“So how do we preserve those? How do we nurture the next iterations of those films so that they really honor what came before and and have a meaning and a reason for existing in a new form?”
Main image: Sam Pressman, courtesy of Pressman Film.