Screen Australia has published new analysis of 197 narrative production applications submitted between January 2023 and October 2025, and found that market contributions, while a constant presence in financial plans, are rarely enough on their own to fully fund a project.

The data, drawn from 119 feature films, 59 adult television dramas and 19 children’s television drama nominations, was compiled by the agency’s Market and Audience team to help producers compare realistic expectations for distribution previews, minimum guarantees, pre-sales and gap financing.

Among feature films, 97% of applications included an ANZ distribution advance, although most represented less than 5% of the project’s total budget. Ninety-six percent of applications had a rest of the world (ROW) sales agent attached, and 48% of those agents provided a minimum guarantee (MG) upfront. Most MGs earned less than A$500,000 ($345,000), although several bigger-budget titles earned guarantees in excess of A$2 million ($1.38 million).

The funding gap occurred in 34% of feature film requests, with dependence concentrated in the budget range of 5 to 15 million Australian dollars (between 3.45 and 10.35 million dollars), where approximately half of the projects required it. Seventy percent of projects that used deficit financing had deficits greater than 10% of total production costs.

ROW pre-sales appeared in 19% of feature film financing plans. In particular, seven projects with budgets of less than 5 million Australian dollars ($3.45 million) secured pre-sales, and in three of them pre-sales represented more than 30% of the budget. Official co-production partners appeared on only seven projects, or 6% of the sample, and the range of AUD 5 million to AUD 10 million ($3.45 million-$6.9 million) represents more than half of those deals. Ireland was the most common partner territory, appearing in almost half of all co-productions, along with Canada, France and India.

In the television field, dramatic projects for adults relied more on distribution advances than on pre-sales. Eighty-one percent of the 59 adult TV apps earned an international distribution advance worth at least 10% of the budget, and 51% earned advances of between A$500,000 and $1 million ($345,000 and $690,000) per broadcast hour. Gap financing was absent in all 59 projects, while pre-sales appeared in only about 5% of the sample. Only one project from the adult television group had an official co-production partner, contributing between 25% and 30% of the budget.

Children’s television told a different story. Just over half of the 19 projects analyzed had budgets between A$5 million and $10 million ($3.45 million to $6.9 million), and 53% got a distribution advance equal to 10% or more of the budget, with producers generally able to expect a contribution in the range of 5% to 15%. Presales were considerably more common than in adult dramas, appearing in 42% of submissions, and 38% of projects earned pre-sales contributions that exceeded 10% of the budget. 16 percent of children’s projects had co-production partners, all of whom also had pre-sales in their financing plans.

Screen Australia said the findings underline that market support is closely linked to a project’s commercial scale and international appeal, and that producers who combine multiple funding sources – rather than relying on a single market commitment – are better placed to close their funding plans.