Wil Wheaton Says MPAA Accounting Creates More Losses Than Piracy
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
I'm suspicious that actors and actresses actually are not that interested (as a group, I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions) in getting paid from residuals and actually prefer to get a big check rather than a smaller check with bigger payments later. I think philosophically though they feel entitled to an equity stake, after all how much of the success of a blockbuster movie is due to the stars that are in it i.e. they bring significant brand value. So they deserve a fractional share, but don't necessarily want to get paid that way for risk and time preference reasons. So we get a mutually agreed upon fiction where the actors get a big check AND a huge chunk of the profits which in practice will be zero since we'll account away the profit, yet we still respect the enormously significant contribution of stars to blockbuster pictures by giving them an imaginary equity stake. It seems that actors and actresses tend to act less like capitalists and more like star employees and so in practice their compensations looks more like what you'd expect from the latter than the former.
"Radcliffe found himself playing the lead role of Harry Potter in the anticipated family film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, based on J.K. Rowling's popular novel, and signed on to star in the first five movies. Once his contract was up, he signed another contract for $50 million to star in the final two films of the series."
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-02-04/news/mn-537_1_eddie-m...
I think a lot of the industry's professionals are looking for innovation and a way into the future while the industry itself refuses to provide.
Almost every case I've heard of where an actor or director sued the studio for cooking the books; the studio loses. Why is this not considered a criminal practice? If I were an IRS agent, flying-spaghetti-monster forbid, I think I would make a call to the studio after one of these cases to ask about auditing those cooked books.
Of course, I've heard stories of studios keeping one set of books for the government and another set for people they owe money. Which goes back to that whole fraud thing.
Also, it's not just the movie/tv industry that does this. Just about any major industry that involves a content creator having a relationship with a content distributor you likely see the distributor stealing from the creator.
Somebody eventually makes some money and as long as that money pays taxes the IRS is probably OK with it.
Knowing that this is how the game is played the actors just have to ask for a big pay check so that it works out the same at the end, more or less.
But advertising costs has been one of the "excuses" I've seen why a movie fails to make money. I find that doubtful since the majority of advertisement spending is at the beginning of a movie's lifespan. Many movies continue to generate revenue years after theatrical release due to sales outside of movie tickets such as DVDs or streaming licenses.
In the end, I still have to wonder why such practices are continued to be ignored when they seem so suspect to begin with. Don't forget that the IRS is probably willing to spend a million dollars to squeeze that extra thousand bucks out of you, so I doubt they would just be OK with what they get.
The key is to not let anyone realize it's a scheme to begin with. Hollywood accounting isn't quite like that since almost everyone understands that they do it.
Regardless, as we've said, this is already a rather well-known practice so it's not like it has to be proven that much anymore.
I don't for a second mean to talk down his accomplishments- he's an author, blogger and even TV personality these days- but now that he doesn't rely on his acting career he can talk out against Hollywood accounting. I would imagine that other middling-successful actors would worry about doing that, as Hollywood could easily refuse to hire them and destroy their career.
I guess what I would like to see is someone like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, etc. speak out about this kind of stuff. They're big enough that I don't think Hollywood could shut them out, and they're also successful enough that I don't think Hollywood accounting affects them so much personally. But they could speak out on behalf of lesser known actors.
How successful? Courtney Love also complained about this ages ago:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml
And Wikipedia also has a whole list of lawsuits over it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
For example, on paper, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix lost $167 million dollars. How bad is that? Well:
"Order of the Phoenix is the unadjusted 15th highest-grossing film of all time, [...] The film opened to a worldwide 5-day opening of $333 million, fourth all-time, and grossed $939 million total [...]"
But you have a point. The people who aren't that successful can't afford to rock the boat. But the people who are successful have less incentive to want to, because it no longer affects them as badly. They can demand cash up front and worry less about the alleged financials of the work.
Most of us on this board are probably too young to remember the blackballing of (accused) communists in the 50s and 60s, but that put a permanent end to the career of some fairly big stars of the time. The context is somewhat different, but I think if the (perceived) threat is big enough that there isn't really any actor that's too big to shut out.
Besides, you wouldn't portray him as a terrorist. You'd portray him as a Muslim.
Or a Muslim sympathizer. Better, and yet worse.
True that would probably fail.
However you could say that $ACTOR is a film pirate, and is publicly supporting the pirates, they are publically critizing the anti-piracy campaigns that are affecting this industry, you don't want to hire a star who speaks out about the film industries like that do you? Why don't we all agree that $ACTOR's politicial beliefs make them unsuitable to be the face for $FILM_COMPANY.
Edit: creative accounting is fairly quantifiable, so why not "fix" that first?
It's more than 10 years since Napster was shut down. More than 10 years of internet piracy. So how come the film & music industry are still around? If they are losing so much money, why are they still able to finance new films? Why are there still highly paid actors? If they are losing that much sales and revenue then they would have no money! They haven't been getting any bail outs, so they are still a successful industry.
If piracy was a problem, it would have shut down some music/film companies by now. It hasn't, ergo piracy cannot be that big a problem.
"Hollywood’s refusal to adapt to changing times is what’s costing the studios money. That’s it."
It's a pity no one takes Mr. Crusher seriously.