A-Talent

yasyas said:

Hi there

I need your help for a simple question: how do we get to Hollywood A-list talents?
I know your answer will be "through their agent" but I was wondering if there was a way to get letters of intent from them without spending money...
I might sound stupid but it's simply not my world so maybe someone here could give me a clue?...
Thanks a lot.

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A-list talent get hundreds of requests a month. They usually only consider projects that are fully funded. If you are hoping to use their name to secure financing, they become a de-facto producer.

I'm sure you'd be fine with that. Mel Gibson signs a LOI, you get your funding, he's a producer, he stars in your movie.

We all would be fine with that.

If you are not willing or able to spend any money securing A-list talent, your quest is going to become harder than it already is. Right now thousands of filmmakers know they have the perfect script for fill in the blank and are trying to get that LOI. Yours better be better if you are going to try to bypass the agent.

So you'll have to be persistent and work hard to meet this actor on a personal level. That's the only way I can see working.

Here's the catch -22. You can't approach an actor or agent without money. The agent is the keeper at the gate and isn't about to consider anything without a guarantee of money, neither is the actor.

It's next to impossible to line up funding without some sort of real name attached. So...

If you don't have money lined up, don't worry about getting a name actor. It is, imho, a colossal waste of time and energy. If you are new to all of this, you have to make the best damned movie you can with what you have; anyone of any reputation will need some proof that you can pull it off, so will any possible investors or distributors. So do it good but cheap and use that to raise the bar for your next project.

yeah but happens if you already have done a feature and secured distribution for it?
I'm asking about talents for my next project cause I learned how hard it is to get a feature distributed without names in it.

yasyas said:

yeah but happens if you already have done a feature and secured distribution for it?
I'm asking about talents for my next project cause I learned how hard it is to get a feature distributed without names in it.

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In that case you'll have to be persistent and work hard to meet this actor on a personal level. That's the only way I can see working without having the entire budget in the bank.

I am umaware of anyway to get LOI's from A-list talent without spending any money. They just don't work like that.

At least in my experience.