FilmNation Entertainment Founder and CEO Glen Basner is receiving the Game Changer Award at the Zurich Summit tonight, and in an onstage conversation on Saturday he traced his entire career from sweater sales to global indie power player. Moderated by German Oscar-winning director Edward Berger, the hour covered Basner’s path from a five-year stint selling ladies knitted sweaters to heading one of the world’s top independent sales, financing and production companies.
The two men first met in the early 1990s at Good Machine, the famed New York production company, when Berger was spending a year and a half there from 1994 and Basner was still working as a sales rep. Their connection has held across three decades.
From Sweaters to Good Machine
Basner got his start in film by helping a childhood friend, Edward Burns, on his first feature The Brothers McMullen. Burns then brought Basner onto his second film, She’s The One, which was produced by Good Machine. That was where Basner learned the trade.
“I was taught that you could sell movies around the world and not lie to people… that you can value and appreciate the relationships that you develop around the world and treat people not just as if you’re selling them a product, but that you are really delivering them a work of art, and that you’re there to help support them as they go and release the films country by country,” Basner said.
The Wedding Banquet
Berger recalled how Good Machine had nearly gone bankrupt before they arrived, having wrapped Ang Lee’s romantic comedy The Wedding Banquet. The company scrapped the photocopier and scraped together funds to attend Berlin.
“It taught us to go through hard times and get stronger… around the time of The Wedding Banquet, the company was basically bankrupt… they decided let’s cancel the photocopier and scrape every last bit together and go to Berlin,” said Berger.
The film won the Berlinale’s Golden Bear and went on to gross some $23M against a $1M budget, becoming the most profitable U.S. film of 1993.
Building FilmNation on His Own
After stints heading sales at Focus and The Weinstein Company, Basner founded FilmNation in 2008 as a sales company. He said the move was natural given his family background.
“My father had his own business, and I wanted to be like my father, so I always had this entrepreneurial bug that I wanted to go out and sort of really test my mettle by being on my own and developing something and seeing if it could succeed,” he said.
The company has since grown into finance, production and TV, with bases in New York and L.A., and a filmography that includes The Big Sick, Promising Young Woman, Anora, Conclave, Maria and upcoming pictures Bunker, Talent for Murder and I Play Rocky.
The Gap in Sales
Basner saw an opening in 2008 when two major American independent sales companies became U.S. distributors.
“Pretty much at the same time, they both became U.S. distributors. Summit, which was run by Patrick Wachberger, became a U.S. distributor, and Mandate, Joe Drake’s company, was bought by Lionsgate… so there was this big hole for an American, unaffiliated-with-distribution sales company,” he said.
Winning Over Florian Zeller
When FilmNation began working on Bunker, Basner said he made his feelings clear to director Florian Zeller.
“I told him to his face he was my filmmaker crush of the moment,” he joked.
“You said that to me too,” replied Berger in mock disbelief.
“I know. It was a different moment,” fired back Basner jovially.
Zeller had been on the cusp of approaching Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, with FilmNation quietly putting out international sales feelers. The director had said, “If they say yes, we’ll move forward. If they don’t do the movie, I don’t think I’m going to do the movie.” Fortunately, they said yes, and the work began.
The film took a traditional pre-sales route thanks to Zeller’s track-record with Oscar-winner The Father, followed by The Son, its A-list cast and an “exquisite” script. The bulk of the international sales were tied up at Cannes in 2025, and the U.S. deal to Sony Pictures Classics was sealed later in collaboration with CAA Media Finance.
“There were distributors that were willing to take the risk. It’s not the easiest thing to say: ‘Here’s the script, here’s the director, here are the actors, and here’s your price’,” said Basner.
“They have to trust us to be able to articulate exactly what the movie is and what the intention is of that filmmaker, so that they can then decide to take the significant risk on a movie like this of pre-buying the film.”
The Challenge of Conclave
On their collaboration on Vatican-set thriller Conclave, Basner said part of the challenge had been conveying Berger’s vision for the film to buyers.
“There were distributors that were willing to take the risk. It’s not the easiest thing to say: ‘Here’s the script, here’s the director, here are the actors, and here’s your price’.”
Thirty-Two Years On
Berger opened the conversation by marking the passage of time.
“32 years later, it’s such a full circle moment,” he said.
Basner’s path from sweater sales to global indie powerhouse is unusual, but it is also inspiring. He built his company on a simple idea: sell movies around the world without lying to people, and the work will speak for itself.
Source material: “FilmNation CEO Glen Basner Talks Art Of Film Sales & Financing: “It’s Really Just About Sitting & Listening To The Filmmaking Team” – Zurich Summit,” Deadline.
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