No sympathy.
Read any book on the film biz, and it will tell you about this practice.
Here's another secret: Avatar didn't cost $1 billion either.
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 07/07/2010 11:17:18 AM PDT by C19fan
Signing a deal that makes anyone a net profit participant in a Hollywood movie deal has always been a sucker’s bet. In an era where studios have all but eliminated first dollar gross and invited talent to share the risk and potential rewards, guess what? Net profit deals are still a sucker's bet. I was slipped a net profit statement (below) for Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, the 2007 Warner Bros sequel. Though the film grossed $938.2 million worldwide, the accounting statement below conveys that the film is still over $167 million in the red.
(Excerpt) Read more at deadline.com ...
Its show-biz 101, if you have a backend or net deal on a movie, you have worthless paper.
True enough but I have never seen some actual numbers before.
As David Mamet said, “There is no Net.”
This really came out in the Art Buchwald “Coming to America” plagiarism trial.
Its pretty funny really. First I always to check to make sure the “Total Profit” number is, as usual, “0”, then I try to figure out how they came to it. Not easy when the three movies took in over 6 billion dollars, but they manage it every quarter.
Jim Garner is another one who had a % of "The Rockford Files" and couldn't understand why he never saw a penny even though the show ran in syndication and overseas for decades. He fought an extraordinary battle to get to Universal's "third set of books" and finally won after years and years.
Its always a gamble to launch these fights because the studios will do their best to make sure you never work again.
No sympathy.
Read any book on the film biz, and it will tell you about this practice.
Here's another secret: Avatar didn't cost $1 billion either.
Damn, I want THOSE accountants to work on my tax returns!
Culture of corruption. Crooked books. Been that way for decades.
Funny how a film “never turns a profit” (so the screenwriter et al don’t have to be paid any bonus on a box-office hit) yet they will up for 3 sequels right away.
No one throws that much money down a drain trying to make a loss profitable.
Well, no one except Obama.
So when will Congress investigate “Big Film” and the shady business practices of Hollywood?.. oh wait, there is nothing to see here... keep it moving...
Hollywood Reds love “redistributing” the wealth.
And yet if a “protected” director or star’s project tanks, the loss can be written against some smaller (or blacklisted) filmmaker’s project crippling his own career.
Big Media doesn’t pay songwriters or recording artists their royalties either.
Remember that the next time the industry gets uppitty about how bootlegging is huring performers. It doesn’t help them much but their own labels screw them worse than any other criminal enterprise.
Send in an accountant and you’ll never go away empty handed.
The good Marxists in Hollywood want higher taxes for you, but they won't be paying income taxes since they are losing money on every film.
Imagine how the recent history of movies might have been if George Lucas had developed “Star Wars” from within this kind of system. Given that it took his profits from this movie and its offspring to build Industrial Lighting and Magic as well as the foundations of Pixar, we can imagine how different things might have been without his ownership of Star Wars licensing rights.
It has nothing to do with “capitalism”. It is outright redistribution.
Shell-game socialism.
The Politburo in Russia and in Orwell’s Animal Farm lived high.
Not everyone is poor under Communism.
Any bets on whether WB owns the marketing and negatives companies they contracted with?
What should a studio executive do if his movie makes a net profit? Shoot the accounting department as a warning to future accountants... and then charge the bullets' cost against the net.
How do they hide that much money?
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