The WGA and AMPTP will sit down for negotiations this month. In yesterday's New York Times, industry potentates let one of their major negotiating points be known:
In an unusually blunt session here today, several of Hollywood’s highest-ranking executives called for the end of the entertainment industry’s decades-old system of paying what are called residuals to writers, actors and directors for the re-use of movie and television programs after their initial showings.
The executives stopped short of saying they would demand an immediate end to residual payments in the upcoming, probably difficult negotiations with writers, actors and directors. But they were emphatic in calling for the dismantling of a system under which specific payments are made when movies and shows are released on DVD, shown abroad or otherwise resold. Instead, they want to pool such revenue and recover their costs before sharing any of the profit with the talent.
“There are no ancillary markets any more; it’s all one market,” said Barry Meyer, chief executive of Warner Brothers. “This is the time to do it.”
Residuals have formed the backbone of payments to talent in Hollywood since the early sixties, when Ronald Reagan negotiated a residuals structure for the Screen Actors Guild and every other entertainment union followed suit.
In 1962, the WGA negotiated a flat 2% cut of revenues, which was altered at the next contract negotiation to the front-loaded system still in use today.
It might be a good idea to go back to a flat percentage of cash flow.
Is that going to happen? Probably not. And I think that the current practices will continue after the dust has settled, despite the executive blustering above. Still, the execs' stance is worrying.
I can tell you if residuals were ended, some other system of payments would have to be put into place, because they're the bedrock for thousands of industry workers, top to bottom. (The IATSE, of which TAG is a part, relies on residuals to undergird its pension and health plans.)
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6 comments:
maybe i'm missing somthing but i don't get how this relates to animation.
we don't get residuals and probably never will as we are seen as lesser beings than live action people.
I guess you missed the last sentence, which was:
(The IATSE, of which TAG is a part, relies on residuals to undergird its pension and health plans.)
We don't get residuals and probably never will as we are seen as lesser beings than live action people.
Forty thousand motion picture employees working under IA contracts get residuals in the form of subsidized health coverage and money added to their pensions.
It's been this way since 1961, when residuals were first negotiated and the decision was made to direct the money into the pension and health plans.
Last year, $371 million in residuals from IA contracts flowed into the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan.
We can argue over whether the form of these payments to IA members is "right" or not. What's not in dispute is that there are residual payments, and they do flow to IA members working under IATSE contracts.
If we have to wait for the studios to "recoup" first we will never see one stinking penny of residuals, period. They know it and we know it. Unbelievable.
Example: right now longtime exec and producer Alan Ladd Jr.(the guy who greenlit "Star Wars" among many others)is suing Warner Bros for just this sort of thing--back royalties and payments he is legally owed. Warner's excuse for not paying him? They say that many of his hits(that they're still selling on DVD) are "still in the red".
Sound familiar? Anyone remember Art Buchwald having to sue for a deserved portion of receipts from that Eddie Murphy film years ago? A film that made--decades ago--100 million? But the studio wouldn't pay because the film "lost money"! The suit revealed the whole murky world of studio accounting. And Art had net points(admitted, finally, in court as orthless). Ladd has GROSS percentages coming to him that the studio for some weird reason just didn't want to keep giving him. Usually such suits(not uncommon) are settled out of court. Ladd's setting a personal precedent by suing.
So anyway, this is a shocking salvo-and it would mean our pensions and health care are in big trouble, folks.
this is a shocking salvo-and it would mean our pensions and health care are in big trouble, folks.
Exactly what it means.
Everything is interconnected. We live in a corporatist age, and anyone who thinks that the middle class isn't under assault doesn't look at national (world) statistics.
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