[zeestephen]

Good story, but I am a little skeptical.

Deliberately lying to the actors, and then making them sign contracts for something that did not exist?

A first year law student could get the original contract nullified in a couple of minutes.

[nickcarraway]

I think I've heard of this for other movies.

There was a a startup, think around the year 2000, that would hire people, but wouldn't tell them the name of the company, or what they were doing, and they couldn't tell anyone where they were working. It might have been called Epinions.

[Rockingham]

The terms of the relationship between actors and producers are set less by general contract law known to a first year law student than by the Screen Actors Guild labor contract and the practices of the industry. The general concept is that actors get paid for their performance, with the producer and studio able (within some limits) to do what they want in editing the film and story for the sake of profitably entertaining movie audiences.

As for lying and egotistical misconduct by and among actors, producers, directors, and studio executives, they are common if disliked for obvious reasons. Yet they are so much a part of the business of Hollywood that movies are made about the often malign effects on the people involved. Some of those movies are quite good, like The Bad and the Beautiful, The Last of Sheila, Sunset Boulevard, White Hunter, Black Heart, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and others.

The general sense of Hollywood's view of itself is that yeah, lying and self-centered misbehavior are bad, but that is how things work -- and what do you expect of a business built on acting -- which, after all, is itself a form of lying?