The Dutch company has started to close deals directly with platforms and FAST channels, without overlooking the work done alongside local and regional distributors around the world

Incredible Film, the company founded and led by Danielle Raaphorst, has been growing consistently during more than a decade, thanks to a catalogue of premier Dutch and Flemish content, and industry trends that have favored their business model.

“In the past few years things have changed,” says Raaphorst to ttvnews. Incredible Film, founded in 2009, started by making deals with distribution companies, both for the theatrical and TV releases of their content. “We sold them to TV and to home videos, also to airlines,” she details. “Now things are changing much more with all the platforms and these FAST channels coming up. People are looking for video-on-demand, so now we are going directly to these platforms and are not working every time with a distributor.”

The new windows allows Incredible Film to work directly with the platforms or the channels for titles like RedBad, the legend, The Conductor or Wild, to mention some highlights from its catalogue.

However, this evolution of the business model doesn’t turn its back on distributors completely: “The role of the distributors is still very important for us because we do a lot of children’s content and, in every territory, those need a dub, and most of the time the distributor takes the risk of the dubbing; they pay for it in advance, and then they sell it to a broadcaster,” explains Raaphorst.

“Distributors are very important for us, otherwise, as a sales agent, we would have to take care of all these dubbing ourselves,” she adds. Incredible does some dubbing, particularly to English, since selling Dutch titles on the original language is “hard”.

Partnering with local and regional distributors have led to some important and recent news, like the acquisition of the 2D animation Pim and Pom by Argentinian Pakapaka.

Animation like Pim and Pom or the trilogy of Slime Movies are part of a very deep catalogue of children and family content represented by Incredible Film.

“We started years ago mainly with kids content because it is content with which we can compete in the international market,” explains Raaphorst. “We have good production values on these films and we can really compete with the rest of the world. Other contents, like romcoms, are a bit harder, although the stories are very strong. In terms of these kinds of films we also sell remake rights.”

Nonetheless, films like the mentioned RedBad, the legend and The Conductor have found success in many markets, including theatrical releases in territories like Spain.

As producers, Reaphorst and Incredible Film have taken a bit of a break, after dealing with a difficult production during 2020 because of Covid-19. But the break is now over: “I started to develop again,” she says. “Our main focus is on local markets here on the Netherlands and when we develop and  produce it we will bring to the international market ourselves.”