There are plenty of ways to make money in film.
- You can take an equity stake in a movie and hope for a box office hit.
- You can offer short-term loans to producers against future revenue from distributors or tax incentives — the model we’ve been using with Film I and Launch Film Finance.
- Or you can just buy shares in a publicly traded studio.
But what if you want more than a financial return? What if you want to be in the movie?
It’s a bold strategy, but not unheard of. And when it works, the upside can be enormous. Think acting fees, a cut of the profits, producer credits, and all the credibility (and perhaps fame?) that comes with having your name on the screen.
Of course, the reality of being an actor is that it’s crowded, risky, and brutally competitive. Looks and talent help. So does luck. But unless you’ve got connections or an existing audience, the path is long and often fruitless.
But what if I told you there’s another way in; a backdoor path that has been around for over a century, but seemingly few know about.
That’s right — you can buy your way in.
Today, I’m going to tell you about the world of pay-to-play filmmaking. Mostly hidden and rarely acknowledged, this quiet undercurrent of Hollywood has shaped more films than you might expect.
Let’s go 👇
Andrew Adamides is a creative producer and co-founder of Roadmap Pictures. With a huge knowledge of film economics, Andrew has written comedy for the BBC and developed/financed film + TV projects. He also knows a lot about collectibles, and is a co-founder at HobbyDB. This is his second issue with Alts. Exactly one year ago this week, he wrote the State of the Horror Movie Market.
Table of Contents
Buying your way onto the call sheet
Ask anyone in the industry, and they’ll have a story about how a film only got finished because someone wrote a check with one important condition.
That condition?
“Give my girlfriend a role.”
It’s not new. Directors and producers have long inserted friends, family, and lovers into their films. But when the demand comes from an investor, it’s transactional.
“I’ll invest $500,000 into your film, but she gets a speaking part.”
This dynamic used to be a Hollywood whisper. Now, it’s becoming easier and more common than ever.
To shine some light on this, I spoke with my friend “Jayden” (not his real name) .
Jayden is an LA-based distributor who helps finance indie features under $10 million. He told me he’s closed multiple funding gaps specifically by selling roles in films.
“There are lots people in town with deep pockets, usually via their parents, who want to get into the movies. Sometimes it’s just a birthday present, sometimes someone wants to launch a career. We’ve sold multiple roles in some projects. It’s pretty much human product placement. On something that’s really low-budget, just one of these can be the difference between the film getting made and not getting made.”
The crowdfunding shortcut
These days you don’t need to know someone like Jayden to buy your way into a film. All it takes is a credit card.
Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter are full of campaigns offering on-screen roles to backers. You’ll find everything from background extra spots and walk-ons to speaking parts and even named roles — all for sale to the highest bidder.
It’s been happening since the early 2010s. In fact, one of the earliest and most famous examples was Veronica Mars.
When the movie’s crowdfunding page went live, one perk stood above the rest: A speaking role as a waiter in a scene with Kristen Bell.
One scene, one line, some framed memorabilia, and an after party invite.
The price? $10,000.
Stephen Follows, a well-known film industry analyst, has even encouraged indie filmmakers to sell roles in his 2018 book, How to Crowdfund Your Film.
His logic is simple: why chase hundreds of $50 pledges for T-shirts and thank-you credits, when a few thousand-dollar buyers can close your funding gap faster (and get a scene out of it?)
One recent example is A Soldier’s Descent. At the time of writing, its crowdfunding page on Indiegogo offers:
- A walk-on role as a bartender
- A featured speaking role for a male soldier (age 18–40)
- A larger part as the “final girl”
- A secondary role as a doctor (already claimed)
- An unspecified lead role with Executive Producer credit
And then there’s Iron Sky: The Coming Race, which took things a step further. For the right price, you could be eaten by a T-Rex onscreen.
Of course, buying your way onto a crowdfunded set doesn’t guarantee much. A lot of these projects never get finished, and even fewer find distribution. Many of these films just die on the vine.
As Jayden puts it:
“Buying a role on Kickstarter is like the Temu version of what I do. The difference is, we actually distribute the movies we finance. So you will get seen. It’s like anything, you get what you pay for.”
Does buying a role buy you ‘street cred?’
Buying a role can help boost your credentials, but only under specific conditions.
If the film you’re in is a SAG-AFTRA production, it might make you SAG-eligible. But that’s a big “if.” Union productions come with added costs, and many crowdfunded or microbudget films opt to remain non-union. If that’s the case, your role won’t count toward eligibility.
(Note: Here’s a solid overview of the SAG-AFTRA rules and tradeoffs for first-timers.)
You’re far more likely to walk away with an IMDb credit, as long as the part is an actual role (not just walking by in the background). Even something like “Second Waiter” or “Man in Bank” will usually do. You may not even need dialogue.
In fact, getting on IMDb has never been easier. Some people create pages for films “in development” that will never get made, just to list themselves as Writer, Director, or Producer.
(Side note: IMDb’s verification process has become shockingly bad. One actor I spoke with has been trying to remove five incorrect credits from his page for a year with no luck!)
How big of a part can you really buy?
So what kind of role can money actually get you?
“There’s a balance.” Jayden tells me.
“It’s unlikely someone will sell you the lead role, especially if you’ve never done anything before. If you want something sizeable, you’d have to fit the role and not be terrible in it. It’s also unlikely to be a part that we could cast with a name who could [also] bring in investment. That said, there are definitely instances where entire films have been financed by someone because their kid or girlfriend wants to be a star.”
He doesn’t, however, know of any instances where financing your own starring vehicle has worked, a position borne out by historical precedent.
One of the most infamous cautionary tales about buying your way in remains that of Meshulam Riklis and Pia Zadora; the 1980s financier and his aspiring-actress wife who tried to purchase stardom outright.
Pia Zadora and the Golden Globes scandal
Meshulam Riklis was a businessman who had more or less invented the concept of using high-yield bonds and leveraged buyouts to take over companies.
His wife, Pia Zadora, was a former child actor best known (err, only known) for her role in the 1964 B-movie, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
When the two married in 1977, Zadora was just 23, while Riklis was a 53 year-old billionaire eager to make his new wife a star.
He started with a film called Butterfly (1982), casting Zadora in the lead and financing both the film and a full-blown awards campaign.
He went all out. Billboards lined Sunset Boulevard. Screenings, junkets, and lavish parties for Golden Globe voters were hosted at Riklis’s Las Vegas casinos and LA estates.
At first, it worked.
Zadora was named Best New Star at the 1983 Golden Globes, even though Butterfly hadn’t yet opened! Hollywood was furious.
But when it finally did open, it flopped catastrophically, and Zadora became a laughing stock.
Critics were merciless. Reviews mocked the campy dialog, overwrought storyline and, in particular, Zadora’s solid-oak acting.
To complete the humiliation, Zadora also won Worst New Star and Worst Actress at the 1983 Razzies — a feat she repeated the following year for her next Riklis-funded disaster, The Lonely Lady (1984).
Her final film appearance came in Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1985), aside from a few self-aware cameos later in life.
The couple divorced in 1993, and Riklis died in 2019.
Jayden reflected on the case:
“[Butterfly] was a wide-release theatrical film back then and, they had a huge amount of money to burn. If you tried to pull something similar today, and it was a disaster, it’s unlikely it would be high-profile, because the distribution landscape’s so different. You’d never be able to buy the lead in a big studio movie now, it would be impossible. Now you’d be trying to do a small action movie or whatever. Nobody would see it and it would disappear.”
He added with a grin:
“If you are going to try doing this, you’re way better off trying to find a secondary role where you can stand out, and being good in it. But not too small though. Nobody remembers who that waiter was in Veronica Mars!”
The film festival route
There is one legitimate way to try buying your way in at the top.
Film festivals have become crucial for launching indie features and landing distribution deals. If you have the capital and a solid creative vision, self-financing a project designed for the festival circuit can be a viable path.
“If you get it into the right festival, like SXSW, and the film is amazing and you’re amazing and it’s a hit, that could work. But really, it all hinges on you not being terrible, which, let’s face it, a lot of the people who try to do this are.”
– Jayden
Whatever the case, he also suggests taking care to ensure you get what you pay for, especially if you have a lot of it to splash around.
There are lots of people who’ll take your money and screw you over.
False promises and lawsuits
Even some of the most high-profile names who’ve made literal bids for stardom have ended up getting burned.
In 2013, poker player, VC, influencer, actor, and billionaire offspring Dan Bilzerian invested $1 million into the war movie Lone Survivor, on the condition that he’d get a sizable on-screen role.
Instead, nearly all his scenes were cut and he wound up suing the producers.
Anthony Scaramucci (aka “the Mooch”) fared slightly better. His $100,000 investment bought him about 15 seconds of screen time in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Others have been less lucky. The now-defunct website buyamovierole.com, which sold access to movie roles, voiceovers, and set visits, shut down after offering parts in the 2012 found-footage horror film The Lucifer Project.
(Investors sued for false imprisonment after discovering the “immersive shoot” involved being locked inside an allegedly haunted former asylum for several days.
The site wasn’t alone. The idea of buying your way onto a set has been surprisingly popular. Omaze.com once raffled off walk-on parts in shows like How I Met Your Mother and White Collar, before pivoting in 2020 to offering luxury houses as prizes instead (a far simpler business model.)
Why the change? Bringing in non-professionals unfamiliar with production schedules and on-set protocols proved to be more trouble than it was worth.
As one insider put it:
“Obviously some just want the fun of doing it once. But anyone who thinks a walk-on part in a TV show is going to launch a career is delusional.”
– Jayden
Zach Horowitz’s nightmare
If you want to buy your way into Hollywood, one thing you’ll need is money. And if you don’t have it, you’ll need to find someone willing to give it to you.
That’s exactly what Zach Horwitz did, by orchestrating the biggest Ponzi scheme in Hollywood history.
A charming Midwesterner from a wealthy family, Horwitz had dreamed of being a movie star since childhood.
After college, pursued acting. Like countless others, he took classes, auditioned, and got nowhere. So he shifted tactics: if no one would cast him, he’d just produce his own movies.
Riding the streaming boom of the 2010s, Horwitz (now using the stage name Zach Avery) launched a company that claimed to buy the rights to low-budget films and sell them to the Latin American divisions of Netflix and HBO. The trade press covered the deals, and his reputation as a rising Hollywood entrepreneur began to grow.
Flush with apparent success, Horwitz began soliciting investments from friends and family, promising quick returns of up to 20%. By 2019, Horwitz had reportedly raised $358 million, fueling confidence and attracting even more money, including from institutions.
But within a year, payments stalled. Almost none of the deals were real, and every piece of “proof”, from the Netflix contracts to the Maveron job offer, was fabricated.
When the scheme collapsed, over 250 investors were out a combined $690 million.
In 2022, Horwitz was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison, trading his foreclosed Beverly Hills home for a cell at Terminal Island.
Closing thoughts
It’s arguably easier to buy your way into Hollywood if you stay behind the camera, where acting talent isn’t required.
But whether you’re funding the dream or trying to star in it, you need to know what you’re doing, because it’s very easy to lose a lot of money quickly in this business.
Jayden agrees:
“You could argue that David Ellison might not have Skydance if he didn’t have Larry Ellison’s money behind him. He ‘bought his way in’. But the connections, the people he had easy access to and could learn from are just as valuable. And if you’re an idiot, even that will only help you up to a point. A lot of stupid people with money are dazzled by the idea of making movies, so they throw money at it and end up losing it all.”
He also agrees that rookie film investors tend to follow a familiar trajectory: they start out enthusiastically funding early-stage projects and script development, lose money, and then either (a) pivot into safer bets like senior debt, or (b) double down and lose even more.
“There’s a difference between the ones who learn and the ones who don’t. If someone’s bringing in cashflowing contracts and spending that cash on development, you know they’ve learned their lesson. If they’re maxing out credit cards to develop films, then they didn’t.”
Ultimately, buying your way into Hollywood is no different from any other high-risk venture. Whether you’re in front of the camera or behind it, you need to understand the landscape, the players, and the pitfalls.
Assess your own strengths against the risks, and only invest what you can afford to lose, in both time and money.
Hollywood doesn’t punish ambition, but it often punishes delusion.
—
That’s a wrap! 🎬
A big thanks to “Jayden” for pulling back the curtain on this world.
Note: I have one extra section — a short coda — which was cut for space. You can read it in the Alts Community.
See you next time,
Andrew
Disclosures
Alts has no financial interest in any movies or companies mentioned in this issue.
This issue was written by Andrew Adamides, and edited by Stefan von Imhof.
