Is this true if you have a star attached and the filmmaker isn't a complete unknown?
Realistically, for you to get pre-sales the whole package needs to work, you need several stars, not just one, unless that one star happens to be someone like Jason Statham.
The film's genre also has to be a highly marketable, basically Action, Thriller, Horror, to some extent Sci-fi and family. Comedy and drama won't do.
First time director won't do, unless in extreme cases where the director happens to be a major screenwriter and the producers are highly experienced.
But basically the director needs to have a track record, preferrably in movies of the same caliber.
The producers/production company has to have a track record as well.
Pre-sales are usually handled by sales agents who naturally take their cut from every sale.
If you want to finance your movie with pre-sales it will cost money, you need to have your movie properly insured and bonded.
If for example you pre-sell your movie to Turkey for let's say $20,000, they would give you no more than 20% or $4,000 in cash in advance.
You would then go to a bank that handles pre-sales and get a loan against the $16,000.
Realistically banks will only finance no more than 80% of that, so you would get less than $13,000 minus all fees, interest etc.
The buyer from turkey needs to be reputable as well, if the bank or sales agent doesn't know them or hasn't done business with them they will not loan you money.
If you can pre-sale your movie to a buyer or two by all means do it!
If your movie turns out to be the next big indie hit, a distributor who would be interested in worldwide rights could care less if you allready sold the movie to a few small markets.
