Aspen Film Fund

Baku Hollywood Venture

Overview

Azerbaijan, as a nation, has adopted a policy of promoting themselves abroad. This Venture established a Film Fund for the purposes of creating a new movie and media business. The creation of this business included both acquiring real estate and acquiring intellectual property (i.e. movies, scripts, songs, books, etc.). The real estate portion sought to establish film studios in both LA and Baku. The intellectual property portion, conversely, built an investment portfolio consisting of films, television shows, and virtual reality films, video games, and VR experiences.

Financially, this venture benefits the Republic of Azerbaijan by stimulating the local economy, and thus increase the GDP. In addition to this, it will create thousands of local jobs when all is said and done. What is more, the venture will benefit Azeri investors by giving them perpetual opportunities to enter into a consistently profitable billion dollar industry. It will diversify Azeri investment portfolios, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue. Finally, as before, it provides an alternative investment opportunity to volatile oil prices. The venture will also benefit Azerbaijan culturally. This benefit will come in the form of supporting domestic film and television (TV) sectors. Also, it will make Azerbaijan a desirable filming destination for film and TV studios, as well as production companies from around the world. Further, historically, an increase in film production in a region leads to an increase in tourism to the area.

Film Content

The Venture has three goals for producing film content: 1) develop and/or package books, pitches, original ideas, scripts and in-house short form content; 2) produce films that use cutting-edge technology; and 3) acquire films that will have mass appeal and global viewership. Additionally, the Venture: Produces both US-based and Azeri-based films; Employs young, often undiscovered creative and technical talent; Seeks passion projects of prominent filmmakers, directors and actors; Adds at least two to five pictures per year to its catalog; Produces at least 1-2 in-house developed scripts; Acquires at least 2-3 film properties by attending major worldwide film festivals and purchasing their rights.

TV Content

The Venture produces acquired and in-house television series: scripted, unscripted, TV mini-series, made-for-television-movies, streaming video on demand (SVOD). The Venture sells its television series ideas directly to the major distributors of programming (ABC, CBS, NBC/Universal, Fox, HBO, Showtime, Lifetime, USA, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Bell Media, BBC etc.) for a producer fee on the pilot and all produced episodes. In addition, the Venture will receive a percentage of the final profits of series exploited through traditional media outlets.