Christian Viel on Maverick Entertainment — “They’re trying to stiff us”

While doing some research today I stumbled upon a thread at the Indie Club message board started by director, producer, and past podcast guest Christian Viel (Recon 2020: The Caprini Massacre, Deaden) on April 14th. Viel reportedly had problems getting paid by the Miami-based distribution company.

Be very careful with these guys. They are trying to stiff us currently on Deaden. I am going to have to get the lawyers involved and so on. Very unpleasant business…

We had two movies released through them and it was a nightmare both times to get our dues.

NOT RECOMMENDED! Do not sign with them and better yet, pass the word. Distributors have to stop trying to !$%* filmmakers!

This appears to be the same old story that distributors have been putting into action for years and years. Distributors seem to believe that because it will often cost a filmmaker more to file legal action for non-payment that they’ll actually recoup if they’re successful in their suit, that they can miss deadlines and simply choose not to send checks.

Christian explained further…

For Deaden, they contacted us directly and we made a deal as they blamed the problems on the intermediary… The deal was: First payment on delivery, second on DVD street date, Third sixty day after street date.

The first payment was hell to get, with every delaying tactics in the book but we finally got it.

Street date for Deaden was April 15, 2008. No check. I inquire. They say they can’t pay us because we did not provide them with a proper Chain of Title - yet have no qualms about releasing the film nationwide!!! - and despite numerous emails that confirmed with their employees the shipment and reception of said documents… Any attempt at resolving this amicably has been rebuffed… So now it’s time to get nasty, which is always unpleasant.

Christian explains what a Chain of Title is below. In short, if you don’t have one of these you (as a distributor) are opening yourself up to a plethora of legal liabilities.

We are talking about the payment for the license. Typically in the US, unlike foreign countries, because the advance is usually higher, they insist on splitting it in two or three. In our case it was one third at signature, one third at street date and one last third sixty days after street date.

So now they are basically stealing the film for a third of the License prize.

Chain of Title is this: the documents that links every person that might have a claim to the copyright or part of the copyright on the film certifying that they got paid and renounce to their rights entirely in favor of the production company or entity that paid them for: script, directing, producing, acting, composing music, editing the film. This allows the production company (or the entity that now own all the copyrights onto the film) to license it to third parties like Maverick. By releasing it nationwide while claiming we did not provide the chain of Title is stupid because if it were true, they would be exposed to serious lawsuits and would not last half a second in court. Even stupider, since I did most of these jobs except acting and script in this case, it’s not too hard to prove who owns the film… And we have all legal contracts for each - our chain of title for this film has been accepted worldwide so far… And they obviously felt safe enough with what they had to release the film without fear from everybody but the Licensor, which they are trying to stiff.

One lesson for young filmmakers is that threatening lawsuits in a legitimate manner (through an actual lawyer — not just saying “I’m going to sue you”) will often cause your check to magically appear. This post is from three days after the first post was made.

We resent them everything we already sent in terms of Chain of Title, threatened law suit plus a cease and desist to BlockBuster and Hollywood Video. We also asked for a notarized letter asking for acknowledgement of full and complete delivery in case they try to pull that card again in 60 days when the other payment is due. The check is in a Fedex truck somewhere. But it was a week of hell… Makes you feel like the contracts they force you to sign are worth nothing…

So it looks like Christian will get his money. Let’s hope.

The only real insight on Maverick I can give is that most of what I’ve heard about them has been positive. Their artwork can be shoddy and they care more about packages of movies than they do individual titles, but I don’t have much against them. I do seem to remember that a year ago this time Maverick was releasing four films a month. Now it’s down to three.

Hopefully all is well with the company.