LOS ANGELES (AP).— “The royalties are out there,” read a sign held up by David Duchovny—referring to the tagline of his television series “The X-Files”—at a recent picket of actors.
Royalties or residual payments are a central issue in the simultaneous strikes by Hollywood actors and screenwriters, and a constant in the protests. While they once lavishly rewarded blockbuster stars like Duchovny himself, union members say they have since been cut to a bare minimum as the industry has shifted to streaming.
Here’s a look at how royalties work and the experience of those who receive them, or don’t:
Royalties are long-term payments to those who work on movies and TV shows, negotiated by unions, for reruns and other broadcasts after the initial release. The basic salary structure was developed in 1960, the last time writers and actors went on strike together.
Traditionally, actors and screenwriters get paid every time a show airs on broadcast or cable TV, or when someone buys a DVD, Blu-ray disc, or (long ago) a VHS tape.
The payments, which decrease over time, are tied to several factors, including the length of a movie or show, the importance of a role, the budget of a production, and where the movie or show is offered.
While streaming companies technically pay royalties, both unions and their members say the amounts and timing of payments leave actors and screenwriters with a pittance of what they once received, and those once paid for reruns of TV shows often get nothing now.
“I did an episode of ‘Criminal Minds,’ and I was getting royalties,” said actress Whitney Morgan Cox, who has a handful of small-role credits. “Then ‘Criminal Minds’ moved to Netflix and those checks stopped coming. Then it resurfaced on cable TV, I got a couple more checks. He went streaming, the checks stopped coming.”
Like all money in Hollywood, the amounts are highly variable. More than a decade after the show ended, the cast of “Friends” was still making millions a year.
But residual payments can easily be as low as a few cents. Some actors have begun sharing their royalties on social media, including Kimiko Glenn of Netflix’s “Orange Is The New Black,” who made a video on TikTok showing $27 in royalties from foreign territories earned in the decade since the series’ inception.
“I always say, ‘Why even cash it?’” actress Zoe Lister-Jones admitted of the checks. “He’s not even worth the paper he’s printed on,” added actor and writer Paul Scheer.
Getting paid pennies is so common that there’s even a bar in Studio City (Hollywood’s studio neighborhood) that offers free drinks to actors and screenwriters who can prove they received a check for less than a dollar. But even modest payments can be essential to a lower-level artist’s livelihood.
“Royalties, that’s how we live,” Cox said. “There are our initial paychecks, which help, but then there are our residual payments that help us with our purchases and our daily lives.”
Lack of a steady income can mean the loss of union health insurance for members, who must earn $27,000 a year to qualify for coverage. The vast majority do not.
Streaming royalties are largely untied from the popularity of the movie or show they’re associated with. Most streaming services are reluctant to release specific viewership numbers.
Artists say being part of a hit now has little meaning. Chris Browning appeared in the movie “Bright” with Will Smith, which Netflix rated as a hit. “If it had been in the old days of DVD royalties, I would have received a residual check of 25,000,” Browning explained. “I got $271 from Netflix.”
David Denman, who appeared in 31 episodes of “The Office,” which aired on NBC, noted that “it doesn’t matter if you watch the show once or watch it 100 times, you’re not going to get more money because more people watch it.”
“When it’s the number one show on Netflix they can make a significant profit, but that doesn’t reach blue-collar actors like me,” Denman said. “We’re just asking to share the profits when the program is successful, that’s all.”
Quinta Brunson, creator and star of ABC’s “Abbott Elementary,” revealed that she has had a much better experience than her friends, who have had similar roles on streaming services. “I think … streaming services could learn right now from what the television networks have done in the past,” she stated. “I think there are a lot of benefits to the way network television works.”
While little has been released publicly about the details of the writers’ contract negotiations, which ended unsuccessfully on May 2, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-Aftra) released a summary of their negotiations after they ended, equally unsuccessfully, on July 12.
The union revealed that negotiators asked the studios to consider a “comprehensive plan for actors to share streaming revenue, as the current business model has eroded our residual income.”
The answer, the union added, was simply “no”. The Alliance of Film and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents the employers of screenwriters and actors, claimed that SAG-Aftra’s public descriptions “mischaracterize” and “deliberately distort” the negotiations.
SAG-AFTRA indicated that the AMPTP flatly rejected their proposals for royalties from lower-budget productions.
They included requiring residual payments for the continued showing of movies on streaming services, regardless of specific budget or length, and paying for shows that stream first and then on TV at the same rate as shows that aired first on TV. They also proposed an increase in the royalties that apply when a traditional media production is broadcast on a free streaming platform, such as Amazon Freevee.
For larger-budget productions, the union was looking for better residual payments for the continued availability of movies and shows on subscription streaming services. SAG-Aftra admitted that there was progress in negotiations on this issue, but that “significant gaps” remain between the two parties.
The AMPTP published far fewer details about the negotiations. But it said it included a 76% increase in overseas video streaming royalties for big-budget productions.
2023-07-21 19:57:59
#Actors #demand #pay
