Today, we’ll talk about the term financial viability. You’ll learn what exactly is meant by the term financial viability and why is it important?
What Is Financial Viability?
Putting it simply, financial viability is the ability or the viability of a project to get financed. There are many things that can make a project financially viable. Nowadays, you can rely on metrics to determine the financial viability of the script. Investors don’t just risk their chances when investing in the production of a script. Instead, they rely on some kind of online programs that determine exactly how much money they will make back.
So, when talking about financial viability, we talk about projects that have the potential to make the money back for the investors. This is a motivation for any screenplay writing that writers may do because, without it, investors will not be interested in the project.
It takes a lot more than good screenplay writing skills to gather the interest of investors. There are many movies that have a good financial score but they lack the viability required to intrigue investors. Say, you hire a bum as a cameraman and a bunch of unknown actors as the cast. The quality of your script will not matter with such a team. Your movie will not be viable without a good production team or a cast that is full of unknown actors.
You can have control over the financial viability with just your script content. This is possible if everything during the pre-production, production, and post-production stages goes smoothly. This ensures that the movie will have a profit turnover and that is basically what financially viable screenplay writing is all about.
Determining A Financially Viable Script
If you are reading this, then you probably want to know about the magical elements that make a screenplay writing product financially viable, what gets the investor salivating at the mouth?
The one thing that you should know is that it’s not just one thing that determines whether production is financially viable. So, we will just address the common denominator amongst all financially viable material. This common denominator is the character development that the script outline brings forward.
-
Character Development
Character development is what all masters of screenplay writing preach to new writers. Every single analysis of the script by professional writers and mentors is mindful of financial viability and that means character development. The main point is that without character development and clear motivations, and goals you will not have a financially viable script. So, make sure that your characters are well-defined if you want to have any sort of hopes that the production of the script brings back money. All that in addition to the quality of your writing.
It is about having the bones of a good script and finding someone that can make it for cheap. Making the production for a realistic price and having a start vehicle sometimes is very much going to do it for you. Remember, if a big actor wants to play a role in your movie, then you are going to rake in the cash. Good writing will draw good actors which will draw investment. And what does a good actor want? Great characters. Everything is interlinked so, make sure that your script content has good dynamic characters and shows character development because that is what every actor is looking for.
-
Genre
There are other factors as well that play a role in determining the viability of a project. For instance, genres. Some genres do a little bit better than the others, they make more money internationally. While some genres don’t sell internationally because they are very niched. It does not mean that they are not very financially viable. In fact, they are very financially viable and have the right budget, but these other factors come into play.
Suppose you have an amazing script but it costs 150 million dollars to produce. with explosions in space and other fancy and dramatic things. So, if someone comes to you and says, “Hey, if you can make this project for 500,000 dollars, that will be financially viable, right?