Delivery Summaries: So boring, but always needed.
Delivery summaries are pretty much a very standard part of legal delivery to any distributor or sales agent. For anyone delivering a movie to a distributor of any size, you’ll see these in your legal delivery schedule, delivery summaries listed or referenced in some form of the following:
Main Title Statement
Paid Advertising Statement
Publicity & Premieres Obligations
Approvals, Obligations & Restrictions Statement
These key documents essentially serve to create a quick summary for distributors of the parameters of what they can and cannot do based on production contracts.
Why Are Delivery Summaries Needed? What’s the point?
Distributors are obligated to comply with obligations promised by production to all the people involved in the film so delivery summaries serve as a "cheat sheet" for distributors, allowing them to quickly understand the relevant terms of production agreements while omitting unnecessary details. Distributors do not need information related to on-set requirements or development-phase considerations—such as whether a cast member requires a driver, a dialect coach, or a specific dressing room size. Instead, delivery summaries focus only on details that are relevant to the sales and distribution phase of a film’s lifecycle.
So for example, the credit obligations promised to the producers, writer, director, cast, crew and other production personnel (e.g. approvals of name and likeness), and instead of a distributor having to go into each specific contract to check that the credits of the film are correct, they can simply look to the Main Title Statement as a quick summary.
Also, it’s worth noting, for larger distributors, you don’t want famous actor 1’s confidential information and cast contract circulating through the marketing department of a large studio, so instead, they’ll have access to these delivery summaries to ensure they’re following what’s required in terms of talent approvals and publicity requirements.
What do each of these delivery summaries include?
We got you. Here’s a rough breakdown of what’s included in each:
Main Title Statement – Specifies each person’s on-screen credit as it appears on main title cards. For example, producer 1 and producer 2 get a main title “produced by” credit on a shared card. Or famous actor 1 gets a main title credit on a single card.
Paid Advertising Statement – Similar to the Main Title Statement, but specific to credits featured within a billing block (the small writing at the bottom of the film’s poster), paid advertising in general (e.g. billboards), and excluded advertising (e.g. a bunch of other stuff specific to each particular distributor).
Publicity & Premieres – Details the production’s obligation to financier, producer, writer, director, cast and crew related to premieres, film festivals, press releases, and promotional commitments.
Approvals, Obligations & Restrictions Statement – Sets out promises by production to its personnel about insurances, any approvals talent may have (e.g. approvals over stills from the film being used in which they feature), providing certain “perks” like free posters, copy of the films etc. etc.!
Importantly, each contract is different and so there’s no hard and fast rule of what is included under each document.
Who creates delivery summaries?
It is production’s obligation to create these. Sometimes lawyers or business affairs will do it, the post supervisor may handle, the producer might, or there are specialized people and companies that solely handle delivery to a distributor and they can draft these for you.
These seems tedious. Is there any room to negotiate these and not provide them?
Honestly, no.
In summary, this is probably the absolute most boring part of a film’s paperwork and delivery but there is no escaping it.
Questions? Get in touch.
Disclaimer: This post should not be construed as legal, commercial or financial advice and should be used for informational purposes only. Information detailed above is current as at March 22, 2025.