Never, never, never pay a distributor.
Never.
Distributors pay the filmmaker an up front fee,
they spend their own money for marketing,
promotion and advertising and then take a cut
off the top. They pay the filmmaker a percentage.
Most small distributors working with movies like
most of us make here (no name stars, no track
record of profit) will not pay anything up front
and offer a very small, very difficult to get, backend
percentage.