Company that licenses a film to cinemas — handles prints, marketing, and theatrical placement. Middleman between producer and exhibitor.
The distributor sits between production and the cinema — and bears the greatest burden in opening up a film's market. The company buys the distribution rights for a specific territory (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or regional), pays an advance or a profit share for it, and then becomes the managing director of the film's release. This means: organizing prints, managing the marketing budget, negotiating cinema placements, compiling press kits, staging the premiere.
In practice, we as producers or directors experience this as follows: The distributor attends early screenings and participates in deciding whether the final cut needs adjustments — not for artistic reasons, but because they know the audience. They decide whether we do a test screening. They determine in how many cinemas the film will be released. For an arthouse film, perhaps 20; for an expected blockbuster action film, 800. They place the trailers online, negotiate with journalists, book advertising campaigns. The distributor bears the financial risk of market entry — if a film flops, the distribution company pays the difference, not the producer (who has already received their fee).
Large distributors like Universal or Warner have structures that handle this in-house. Specialized distributors like Buena Vista or Wir Kinos focus on specific formats (documentary, international arthouse cinema). Some producers act as distributors themselves — this costs time and expertise but saves the commission (typically 30–50% of cinema revenue). On set, you have little interaction with the distributor, but in post-production, discussions become intense: final cut, running time, rating, subtitles, DCP specifications — the distributor controls everything according to their market expectations.
This makes the distributor not an artistic partner, but a crucial economic one. A strong distributor can lead a mediocre film to success with clever marketing; a weak one can condemn a good film to obscurity. Therefore, producers negotiate hard for the right distribution partnership.