Completion Bond

A completion bond (completion guarantee) is a contract from a guarantor company promising a film's financiers one of two outcomes: the film gets finished and delivered per its approved script, budget, and schedule — or the financiers get their money back. Banks lending against pre-sales and gap generally won't close without one.

The bond company earns its fee (historically around 2% of budget) by underwriting the production like an insurer: vetting the budget, schedule, line producer, and key crew before committing, then monitoring cost reports and dailies throughout the shoot. The bond's teeth are its takeover right — if a production runs badly enough over, the guarantor can step in, replace management, even finish the film itself. Takeovers are rare; their possibility is what keeps them rare.

For emerging producers, the practical meaning is discipline by proxy: a bondable project must have a realistic budget, a coherent schedule, and experienced hands in key seats. "Would this bond?" is a useful filter for any production plan long before a guarantor sees it.

It's also one more reason page-level budget honesty matters: the approved script is the bonded scope. Our scorecard's budget realism read is the earliest version of the same underwriting question.