Buyers at Sony Pictures

[mlv90066]

Is there a resource guide letting writers know who the buyers are at certain Studios? I'm particularly interested in Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures. Also, is there a list of people who have the power to Green-light films at the major studios available anywhere? Thanks.

[BROUGHCUT]

The buyers at a particular studio are to be found among their 'first-look' production companies/producers. Variety.com and the creative directories HCD and Producers 411 have sections listing deals by studio.

There are presently some 30 production companies with first-look deals at Sony, and probably not all of these have the capacity to be 'buyers', but the likes of Matinee (Warren Zide) and Original Film have co-financing/discretionary funds bankrolled by Sony and fall into this category.

Studios very rarely purchase scripts directly. It's almost always a production company or individual producer that takes a script into a studio with the view of getting it 'set-up' there. If they decide they want the script, then the production company will often finance the script option or purchase using some of the 'discretionary' fund the studio has made available to it (for developing projects) through their first-look deal.

I wouldn't bother too much about targeting 'buyers', but if you limit your first queries to those production companies with first-look deals (at all the studios, not just Sony), then you can't go far wrong.