Holding Company Operating Agreement Template for Filmmakers

A Holding Company LLC Operating Agreement is the foundational corporate document that governs your overarching production slate and incubates your intellectual property. It legally isolates your scripts and development cash from the catastrophic liabilities of physical production, while ensuring co-founder deadlocks never paralyze your company’s creative or financial momentum.

Protect your slate, your scripts, and your development cash from the physical liabilities of an active set.

You and your co-founder form a production company.

You pool your cash, option three incredible scripts, and finally get the green light to shoot the first one.

You decide to run the physical production through this main company to keep things simple.

Then, a stunt goes horribly wrong.

Or a location is severely damaged.

Or an actor gets injured.

The injured party sues.

Because your main company acted as the physical production entity, everything it owns is now on the chopping block.

You don’t just lose the movie you’re currently shooting—you lose your development cash, your other two scripts, and your entire company.

Do not use a generic $50 operating agreement from LegalZoom or Google.

Standard LLC agreements are built for tech startups or bakeries, not independent film slates.

They do not contain the strict internal prohibitions required to separate intellectual property from physical production risks, nor do they solve the catastrophic 50/50 decision deadlocks that kill indie partnerships.

You don’t need to pay an entertainment lawyer $800 an hour to build an intricate corporate web.

You just need the right architecture.

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