- The Wonderfilm Media Corporation is an entertainment acquisition and production company with experienced Hollywood producers able to tap into the film industry’s talent pool
- The company utilizes a lean production model that emphasizes low upfront costs, quick recovery of early shooting fees and building profits late in a film’s life cycle through delivery of a consumer-popular entry that exceeds revenue targets established with outside partners
- Amid the ongoing streaming wars, the largest scripted entertainment entities are expected to continue looking for content to feed a hungry machine that currently demands an estimated $107 billion in content acquisition spending annually
- Wonderfilm’s indie-style approach to filmmaking targets the hungry media machine for a win-win result
When Discovery Inc. President and CEO David Zaslav launched into the new year by meeting with investors in a webcast session of the Citi 2020 Global TMT West Conference in Las Vegas, the non-scripted lifestyle media content giant’s executive offered insights on the direction of consolidation and the streaming wars, arguing that consolidation of media outlets will ultimately winnow down the scripted content field but that existing streaming services will still continue to search for more content outside their own production offices.
“Every one of those bigger players doesn’t have enough content, every one of them has come to us and said you have a huge library in women, a huge library in family, your content library itself is bigger than Netflix as a whole, we need more bulk, we need more great characters,” Zaslav told the conference, adding that Discovery doesn’t intend to farm out its content (http://ibn.fm/awT8q).
The network executive’s comments underscore the hunger large content providers have for acquiring a continually larger volume of product from outside their own stables. British Columbia-based film production house Wonderfilm Media Corporation (TSX.V: WNDR) (OTCQB: WDRFF) is banking on that market, using a lean product delivery model to film vetted scripts attached to known celebrities before cameras even start rolling.
The company’s strategic budget model seeks to turn significant profits by traveling in the popular indie-level market with a slate of celebrity power to enhance its opportunities. Wonderfilm is approaching its third anniversary of commercial operations since four Hollywood producers – Daniel Grodnik, Kirk Shaw, Jeff Bowler and Bret Saxon – combined their talents to create a publicly traded entertainment company with offices in Beverly Hills and Vancouver, drawing on already established access to Hollywood’s talent pool.
Wonderfilm’s executives have resumes that include sleeper hits such as Get Out and The Hurt Locker, which have turned relatively small budgets into successful revenue-producing projects. Recent efforts have tapped luminaries such as Famke Janssen, Guy Pearce, Nicolas Cage, Ryan Phillippe and John Travolta.
The company packages and pre-sells its film products for distribution based on genre and market research. Its controlled front-end costs allow it to maximize the benefits of line item fees from the production budgets until the contracted revenue terms of the film are fulfilled and Wonderfilm begins to reap its share of any additional profits if the films are successful.
The largest media corporations are spending an estimated $107 billion each year on acquiring new content, according to Variety (http://ibn.fm/YoEGx). Wonderfilm’s project pre-sell for an average of about $5 million, with about $500,000 to $750,000 of that amount remaining in-house as commissions.
“Wonderfilm is one the very few production companies with the creative and financing depth to develop, package and produce several films simultaneously,” Shaw, the CEO, stated in a news release (http://ibn.fm/nNXCg).
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Wonderfilm.com
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to WDRFF are available in the company’s newsroom at http://ibn.fm/WDRFF
