Documentary filmmaking has never been a profession one enters into to get rich — though for a brief period it seemed possible.
Cable expanded documentary’s reach to wider audiences in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and films like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “March of the Penguins,” and “An Inconvenient Truth” became legitimate box-office breakthroughs, but nonfiction features on the whole remained something of a stepchild within the larger Hollywood ecosystem until 2017, when Netflix acquired Brian Fogel’s “Icarus” for $5 million.
At the time, the deal was one of the biggest ever for a non-fiction film. And it was followed by even bigger deals: In 2019 Netflix shelled out $10
→ Continue reading at Variety
