Investors trickling back to film biz

When it comes to financing movies, the tables have turned. In the cash-flush days of 2005-2008, Hollywood had more investors than deals to give them. The 2008 financial collapse scared off many Wall Street financiers, some of whom are just starting to trickle back into the film financing game. That cautious return to the biz was one of the persistent themes at Wednesday's Film Finance Forum West presented by Winston Baker in association with Variety. That means that whoever holds the cash has more power than they might have had just a few years ago. And as studios making big-budget tentpoles continue to feel the pressure of corporate parents, the majors need to share the risk -- and the upside -- more than ever. "Most studios feel like they need to have a stable of financing partnersand that's a fairly recent development," said Jean-Luc De Fanti, founder and managing partner at Hemisphere Capital Management. De Fanti spoke on a panel at the conference aimed at guiding investors and filmmakers through new models for financing movies. "The financial investors, I think, should be very disciplined, very educated, very thoughtful about their process," Clark Hallren, managing partner at capital raising and advisory firm Clear Scope Partners, told the audience. Hallren adds that for studios, taking on those investors is just good business. "It's prudent for them to share risk." That means that studios are also getting increasingly cautious with the type of material they're willing to take risks to produce themselves. "We have an extremely rigorous greenlight process," said Ellen Shallman, an attorney and VP at Universal. "It's very detailed, very thoughtful, very much a bottom-line driven analysis of what films get made We just don't have the luxury of making vanity pictures." Contact Rachel Abrams at Rachel.Abrams@variety.com