Alright, this is getting crazy now. In an article in the NY Times last week the company Cantor Exchange was profiled. They intend to introduce an online market which allows individuals to trade futures of movie box office results. Basically you bet on how a movie will fare at the theater. Credit Default Swaps are so passé.

According to Cantor everybody is allowed to participate. Yeah! I always wanted to bet on movies. I am  bored betting on horses and little white balls at the casino on the roulette table. Even people that are close to the movie can participate. This is where it actually becomes interesting  … for the producer or the distributor.

Movies are tested before a producer/distributor commits millions of dollars to a campaign. So, if you know from the test screening that you have a flop on your hands the production company could shorten the futures to hedge their investment in the movie.  If the movie then tanks as predicted you can buy the paper cheap to fulfill. Or if the movie is being received better that expected, the producer/distributor then can decided if the upside in ticket sales is bigger then the futures loss and stay in the theater or just pull the movie. Hmmm … let me think …. wouldn’t that be called insider trading? And that’s just one scamming option.

So far this betting parlor still needs approval from the government agency CFTC. Cantor is hoping to open the market on April 20th.

It is hard enough as is to find financing for films these days. Linking theatrical releases and betting might actually make it more difficult to raise money for films.

And should this ever get approved I can’t wait for my financial advisor to try to introduce me to this incredible investment opportunity. This definitely would make me change my brokerage.

I ran into biracy.com a few days ago. The Biracy Project is using social media to finance and distribute films. The interesting part is not so much the fund raising process via micro payments and crowd scourcing. If the “experiment” works as planned biracy.com can fill an important space in the independent film distribution landscape. Check it out. And should you want to join you can use “stefanradtke” as the biracy ID to sign up.