The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost nothing

Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by ptero on Sunday April 23, 2017 @08:29AM (#14177904)

I probably missed that in the article -- did their contract provide for sharing profits (so studios legally had to pay) or not (maybe poor contract, but at least the way things happened was legal).

I'm not a fan of studios or current copyright laws, they are horrendous. But, being the devil's advocate: I think the model often is that studios provide exposure for young artists and get profits from first success. If a movie is a hit, artists get real money on the second and later ones.

If that is the case, the contract is somewhat morally defensible (60k in 1984 was more than it is today).

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Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by delinka on Sunday April 23, 2017 @08:38AM (#14177938)

In Hollywood, if your contract stipulates profit sharing, expect to get nothing. Hollywood accounting makes sure no profits are made within the company you have a contract with. You need to get paid up front, or based on gross revenue.

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Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by defen on Sunday April 23, 2017 @01:42PM (#14179259)

> Hollywood accounting makes sure no profits are made within the company you have a contract with.

A phrase I've heard to explain this is "Every time a building burns down in Tunisia, it gets charged against Star Wars"

The guy who played Darth Vader in the original trilogy has never received any royalties, because those films never made a profit.

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Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by dboreham on Sunday April 23, 2017 @08:47AM (#14177958)

Not just Hollywood. Any time someone offers to give you some proportion of "profits", in any industry, say no.

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Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by brianwawok on Sunday April 23, 2017 @09:27AM (#14178066)

Well treat it like stock options.

Assume value is 0 and eval the deal. If the deal is otherwise good go for it. If you need an expected value to make the deal good, don't do it.

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Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by Pica_soO on Sunday April 23, 2017 @02:39PM (#14179637)

Demand a revenue share.

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Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by Retric on Sunday April 23, 2017 @10:29AM (#14178289)

The problem is conflict of interest. If you make a deal with company A, but for no reason profits are moved to company B, then someone at company A is committing fraud.

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Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by TheOtherHobbes on Sunday April 23, 2017 @12:57PM (#14178973)

Which reminds me of a thing that a niche but big-name-in-that-niche fiction publisher did a few years ago.

They channeled ebook sales through a foreign subsidiary and claimed it wasn't really a publisher but a distributor. This gave them an excuse to pay authors 30c for ebook sales, when they should have been getting $2.

Obviously Niche Publisher pocketed the difference.

There was a class action suit and eventually the publisher settled out of court for $4m. A quarter of that went to the lawyers.

BigCo content companies are staffed by thieves and parasites. Being creative isn't the worst job in the world, but it's unusually good at attracting thieves, fraudsters, and other vampires.

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