This weekend, a debate on Twitter rocked the film and TV world, and I thought it would be fun to bring it to No Film School and discuss both sides.
Basically, we've seen Obsession make hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. And one crew member tweeted that, while they were paid a fair wage under the movie's original $750k budget, they lamented that their hard work would go unrewarded by the massive profits the studio (and possibly the filmmaker, depending on their contract) would take.
Naturally, Twitter took this nuanced debate and broke it into a million pieces, but I decided we should reconstruct it and present both sides of the argument.
So, good reader, I ask you...who actually earns the right to a movie's upside? Is it the entities risking the capital, or the workforce doing the heavy lifting?
Let's dive in.
The Argument for Labor
As a guy who is a strong supporter of labor unions, I see this point of view not just as wanting a slice of the pie, but as a critique of how the industry values physical contributions to a film or even a profitable TV show.
Without the crew, you have nothing to profit from, so why not pay them as part of the artistic endeavor?
The Project Doesn't Exist Without the Crew
Let's get the obvious out of the way first...without a crew, you don't have a movie or a TV show. From the above line all the way below, you need people to make it happen.
A film set is an assembly line where the product is art. Everyone has to do their part; otherwise, the final product may not be any good.
When the rewards for that asset are purely top-heavy, it creates a deep sense of alienation among the people who actually built it during the long hours and late nights.
The Myth of the Investor
Not to get too hammer-and-sickle here, but a lot of this boils down to workers' rights and the idea that we should bend over to capital.
The frustration with studio financing often stems from how corporate structures mitigate their own gambles.
Major studios rarely write a single check; they spread their bets using slate financing, hedge fund partnerships, aggressive international pre-sales, and massive state tax credits.
When a film hits the jackpot, the profits flow upward to corporate entities that never had to stand in the mud at 3:00 AM hoping to get the moon just right.
For the crew, the narrative of the "brave investor taking a massive gamble" rings hollow when compared to the guaranteed physical toll of production.
Why should they get all the profits while you can barely afford rent? Shouldn't you also get some of the money that trickles down, since you created the entity they sold?
If a project relies on keeping lower-tier wages low to protect its budget but offers zero financial upside when it becomes a cultural phenomenon, the economic framework feels inherently lopsided toward the studio, not the crew.
The Warning
The one thing I will say is that if people want a model where everyone shares in the back end, they're going to have to accept that the companies paying into these models are going to want to mitigate risk somehow.
That means you'll likely get a limited number of genres or storylines or artists that they're willing to work with.
It also means they're going to want crews, even union crews to make a lot less up front because they're going to want to keep costs down. They want there to be a profit, and that may mean fewer PSs, smaller crews, and fewer jobs.
The other worry is Hollywood accounting may make it look like these movies never get profitable because of marketing and such, just like studios do now. So you can't always bank on those payouts.
The Argument for The Studio / Capital
Look, I know I was all union rights above, but I'm also a capitalist, and being rich seems awesome. I legitimately hope I can feel what that's like someday.
If you have money and you're willing to risk losing it by employing a ton of people, you should also get the rewards for that risk.
It's Not "Just Money"
A lot of people online were making the argument that investors only bring money, which isn't that bad of a deal when you weigh it against talent.
But that capital represents a massive liability, and it pays for talented people.
If a $250 million blockbuster completely tanks at the box office, the crew member still keeps their day rate.
And most of these day rates are set by unions. If you're working on a non-union project, you're setting your own rate. If it's not enough, then negotiate for more.
At the end of the day, your paycheck clears regardless of whether the audience shows up.
You don't absorb the project's debt and get paid to participate. You also don't face shareholder lawsuits or watch an entire production company collapse.
All you have to do is your job...a job you're paid to do.
The investor takes on 100% of the financial downside, which is why the system is wired to give them the upside.
The Reality of Leverage
Here's a nasty truth: there are a lot of people who want to work, and the studios know that representing them only means they have all the leverage in the situation.
Points and profit sharing are usually incentives used to secure irreplaceable assets... And the only crew members viewed with that value are an A-list director with a distinct vision, a star who guarantees international ticket sales, or a producer who spent five years developing the intellectual property.
Maybe in TV you might also see that value in a writer who's coming off a hit. Or a writer in film who has worked a long time and written a ton of hits.
But an entry-level crew position, while grueling and necessary on the day, does not drive the commercial viability of the film.
This is ruthless capitalism.
But these places will just hire someone else who's not putting up a fuss.
You can argue that things like costumes, editing, and cinematography matter in terms of the finished product's look; Hollywood does not market on those. It markets on stars in front of the camera and behind them.
They know that and don't care what you think.
It's In The Contract
At the end of the day, if you're a PA, chances are you are an hourly employee. And if you want a profit share in that, they'll just find someone else willing to work their way up and not take that.
If you have a contract, it's usually set by a union and likely comes with no profit sharing.
When you accept a guaranteed daily rate, you are effectively trading the potential of future profits for the certainty of immediate payment.
In the independent film world, maybe crew members could defer their pay or take pay cuts in exchange for a piece of the back end because the upfront money isn't there, but that would require a contract stating that and would have to be negotiated with the production company.
On a studio film, most of these places feel that you get the security of a reliable paycheck, but the trade-off is relinquishing any claim to the box office haul.
'The Studio' Credit: Apple
Can a Middle Ground Actually Work?
Here's the thing: I just tried to argue both sides, and I do think there's merit on both. That means the answer to this problem lies somewhere in the middle.
Just last year, the movie Sing Sing was made on a radical profit-sharing model. Every single person on that set, from Oscar-nominee Colman Domingo to the PAs, was paid the exact same daily rate based on SAG low-budget scale.
Because everyone accepted that flat daily rate, the filmmakers were able to keep the initial production budget low. In exchange for taking that lower upfront pay, every single cast and crew member was granted actual equity in the film.
To pay off the debts of making the movie, 60% of all revenue generated by the film went to recouping the investors' money. And then 40% went directly into the cast and crew profit pool.
For that movie, once the investors were paid back 120% of their initial money, all subsequent profits from the film were split 50/50 between the investors and the cast/crew pool in perpetuity.
To me, that seems like a nice way for everyone to take some cash home. But it would be nearly impossible to do that with a big-budget movie, where you need hundreds of millions of dollars in the budget.
But for that, I would look no further than Artists Equity, the production banner founded by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who, in my opinion, have solved that dilemma.
They built their company to operate on a compensation model that intentionally spreads backend profit participation across the entire production, including the crew.
The way they do that is by paying an [Upfront Day Rate] + [Performance-Based Tiers] = Shared Success Model.
In other words, you get paid a day rate but then get financial kickbacks in certain tiers of the box office. Not everyone gets the same kickback; stars and above-the-line probably get more, but even the PAs get something.
This year, they made The Rip, and were able to tear the model on streaming.
Since streaming platforms traditionally pay a flat licensing fee rather than a share of box office gross, below-the-line workers have been completely locked out of any share of the money.
Yet not anymore.
Artists Equity built tiered performance thresholds into their contract with Netflix. When the film hit major viewership milestones, the streamer paid out a massive cash bonus to everyone on the crew.
There was a huge incentive for them to even tell their friends and family to watch, that's free word of mouth.
Will Anything Change?
It's hard to believe Hollywood will scramble to pay PAs more or let the cash trickle down at all.
But the model pioneered by outfits like Artists Equity shows that when leadership actively chooses to value the collective behind the camera, the financial upside can be redistributed without collapsing the production ecosystem.
So we need artists with a lot of power to help force the studios in this direction, even if it means them making a little less money themselves.
That's the slippery slope of asking people with all the power to help. It sounds good, but will they ever do it?
Summing It All Up
That was a fun debate, and I do think the middle makes the most sense. That way, everyone gets paid out at the end, and if the thing makes no profit, people still make a wage on the project.
Where do you land on this?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
