Rights Clearance for Film & TV: A Special Report

Rights clearance is an often underestimated but essential part of the successful making, distribution and monetization of a film or television production. Without it, few productions would ever find their way to consumers.

Though rights clearance is often a process that occurs in the background, industry trends are now expected to increase the demand for rights clearance and the complexity of that work. As media companies pursue profitability on streaming services, distribution is expanding as content licensing comes back into favor and content diversifies across more platforms and territories than ever.

This means the industry will need to prepare to navigate an increasingly intricate web of rights and permissions required for projects to thrive wherever they land.

Meanwhile, standard clearance processes themselves need a rethink for the digital age, with software, blockchain and AI technologies emerging to offer real efficiencies for producers and clearance professionals.

Film and television managers, producers and networks seeking to lower production and operating costs can utilize specific methods for both immediate and future impact.

As the industry’s needs increase on this front, Variety Intelligence Platform’s special report “Rights Clearance for Film & TV” provides a comprehensive examination of the state of rights clearance work and how its processes can be improved with digital tools to increase efficiency and lower costs. Further, it provides actionable steps and best practices for producers and clearance professionals to prepare for digital transformation opportunities.

This report draws on a diverse range of sources and expertise, including a comprehensive series of over 40 in-depth interviews conducted in the summer of 2023. Interviewees spanned the ecosystem of stakeholders deeply involved in or affected by rights clearance and included rights clearance professionals, film and television executives, production company founders, independent producers, errors and omissions (E&O) insurance brokers and technology tool founders and leaders.