How and why What started it all was the 2016 election. I was at the Napa Valley Film Festival showing my documentary The Lost City of Cecil B DeMille, and I remember sitting in my hotel room watching the results come in and being devastated. While in Napa it dawned on me that I had worked on many other people’s films and it was almost two decades since I had made a film of my own. I’d spent much of this time trying to get one particular project made and was not successful. It felt like I was running out […]
by Daniel J. Coplan on Apr 21, 2022At Filmmaker we have covered Section 181, the United States’ film tax credit incentive, quite extensively, but this article by entertainment attorney Daniel J. Coplan, Esq. is both a great overview of how the incentive actually works for individual investors as well as an explanation of one underknown element. The latter concerns the ability of some investors to deduct against ordinary income, not passive income. In short, if you’re raising private equity for a U.S. film this year, read on. (This piece was originally published on LinkedIn and is reprinted with permission.) The purpose of this short article is to […]
by Daniel J. Coplan on Jul 15, 2016