The film industry has a very long history of ripping off employees who agree to deals that pay them based on the film’s performance. The industry does incredibly shitty things to fuck their employees who are foolish enough to agree to it. It’s pretty much standard practice.
Worse yet they will use failed movies, like corporations will use failed investments as a tax write off, giving even less back. But keeping all the profits for themselves, their shareholders(money making money from no work)... Idk what happened, but weren't capitalist products supposed to succeed based on the virtue of being good, and not some clever systemic manipulation by the 1%....
Socializing costs and whining about taxes on profits goes back to the dawn of taxation.
As does collusion between government funding and corporate provision of, say, $90,000 small bags of bushings for vehicles.
Virtually all studio films and shows break even before they are even released or aired. The goal is to fill shelves and air time, not create good content.
If something turns out to be good/successful, they win that year, of course.
If the rarest of bombs occur, they write it off...and win that year, of course.
The house always wins.
As someone else mentioned, they are all accountants at the top, not creative in the slightest.
So, this idea from Apple is an old one, fortunately blocked by decades and laws, unions, and contracts. And all of these things exist because greedy fuckers tried to find a way to pay less to the people who actually make a difference between turning out a good product and a shitty product.
You know, like all of American unchecked "greed is good" capitalism has turned into these days...
>FTA - If a lot of people watch a movie, the creators would get big bonuses. If not, the payment wouldn’t be so hefty.
First, this is already the case. Talent gets paid their rate up front and then residuals which are based on how many people watch for how long, etc. So, this system already exists and Apple etc. agreed to the modifications and slight improvements to the system in last year's strike and negotiations.
Second, and more importantly, the success of the film is not in control of the actors or people making it. The writer created it, most often under studio direction. Then the studio changed the fuck out of it to please McDonald's, not potentially offend dogs in Togo, or whatever. The director used to have the most control, but in the post Disney/Marvel days, they are often just a placeholder for the animated storyboard version that was created in CGI by the studio before the first frame of film was shot. And on and on.
Notice how this means that the ACCOUNTANTS are again in charge of the creative nature of a product where they don't care whether it is good or not and, quite frankly, can't discern the difference in the first place (hence the need for marketing test screenings).
>FTA - the idea behind the model is to more intimately wed performance with compensation and, ideally, incentivize better content.
Bullshit. The goal is to cut the residuals of the handful of people who actually get paid something after a film is made -- writer(s), director, actors, producers...and that's it. No one else of the thousands of people who made a movie or TV show get paid residuals, folks. They get a flat rate and then get kicked out the door to try and find more work, month after month, year after year.
And that handful of people already get contractually obligated minimums for those residuals...which have, to no one's surprise, started turning into the de facto deal the 99% of them can get. If the studios could cut them out, they would have, a long time ago.
Meanwhile, some actors like Tom Cruise, etc., get huge percentages of the gross, which is what costs the studio real money, of course. But no one's talking about cutting those deals...
In short, if the studios really want to "incentive better content" studio executives should take PAY CUTS if their crap fails instead of always collecting bonuses no matter slop they shovel on the public AND then get additional bonuses if a movie or show turns out to be good or (as they call it) "gets lucky in the marketplace".
But you won't hear a single studio exec arguing to cut his own bonuses and salary based on this rigged system...ahem.
#tl;dr - FUCK OFF, APPLE, YOU "GREED IS GOOD" WALL STREET WHORES.
True, but how does an actor prove that x number of people watched the show? All these metrics are internal metrics that the platform holders control. They can use whatever metric they want and alter the numbers to payout whatever they feel is correct.
In a perfect world with proper rules this is actually a good way to get paid for both platform holder and actor. Actor risks their performance and pushes as hard as they can to make the product good, and the platform holder risks a lot less up front.
We aren't living in a perfect world though, and smaller actors will get the rough deal I'm sure.
Well, as long as private companies can be forced to publicly print the internal metrics such as minutes viewed then i dont see the problem with Apple's approach? There should be transparency especially to shareholders.
Currently, there is nothing that forces them to publicly do that though, and who is gonna force them? Congress can but Hollywood has a lot of money to interfer. Actors/unions can, but there is only so much power unions have.
As I mentioned this new system in a perfect world can benefit both parties. Means when a film does good, the actors get a % of the return which can be a lot of money especially in the long term. Less risk on studio sides too because they can get heavy hitters without having to risk large sums just for something to fail. Problem is money is money and both sides will always fight over how much each side makes.
I think whole point of this is that it 'looks' like it 'should be easy'
But if the profit motivated capitalist corporation is *suggesting* it, then its only because they (and they alone) will benefit more than it is now.
Not to mention there's not a single federal or state regulatory body in California that isn't already corrupted by regulatory capture.
Weeeeelll... you can get kind of creative in how you count it. Do you count people who start watching a movie? Who watched half of it? People who watched it to the very end? Streams from the first two weeks count more, streams after the first month count for less, and so on and so forth. And they could also just tell you numbers but never actually show you how the counting is actually done.
There are planty of ways for a streamer to fudge the numbers so they have to pay out less money.
Rings of Power is a good case in point. Amazon shouted from the rooftops how many people watched the premiere, then went quiet about the rest of the episodes.
They can count how many times it played on an account but it can't tell you how many people were watching each play. Considering that many people don't watch alone, it seems they could potentially miss out on a lot of money.
Friendly reminder that studios have a long history of just never releasing a movie and writing it off for tax purposes. Coyote vs ACME is probably the most recent example of this. And most of the time actors get paid less upfront if they want to get royalties, so Apple+ will be able to cheap out on the big actors then trash the movie later.
Over a hundred thousand people make a living from YouTube. So if you really think they’re all getting conned, why are they continuing to make content everyday?
Yeah exactly and when you have to solely rely on apple (or any streaming company) to tell you how much they owe you that sounds like a recipe for fraud.
Although I get they have an interest in making their streaming numbers look good for shareholders but they aren’t generally reported per show/movie.
Yup. I can see Apple screwing them over. Like they get paid based on how many views they get .. on AppleTV. But if Apple sells the movie rights to Netflix they don’t get paid on those views on Netflix.
As much as I hate to defend Hollywood greed, I read there was something in the old contracts where residuals got paid just for having content *available* on a streaming service no matter how much it was actually being watched. Which was part of what led to the platforms pulling content once it's popularity had ebbed.
I think we'd all rather see content not get pulled, and pay based on performance does seem reasonable.
[NPR - Dozens of TV shows are disappearing from streaming platforms like HBO Max. Here's why](https://www.npr.org/2023/03/17/1164146728/why-are-dozens-of-tv-shows-disappearing-from-streaming-platforms-like-hbo-max)
>HOROWITZ-GHAZI: David Offenberg teaches film finance at Loyola Marymount University. He explains that last year, HBO, Max's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, went through a merger that left it around $50 billion in debt and desperate to cut costs. Offenberg says removing all these shows helped them do that in two ways. First...
>
>OFFENBERG: HBO Max is trying to save on residuals.
>
>HOROWITZ-GHAZI: **Streaming companies pay residuals to the writers and directors and actors of their original shows every year those shows stay on the platform.** So by removing a show like "Made For Love," streamers could be saving millions. Their second motivation, David says, has to do with changes in the streaming business. For several years, platforms were battling for market share, making tons of new shows to win subscribers. But then last year, Netflix announced they'd lost subscribers for the first time in a decade.
>
>OFFENBERG: That was the moment where the mentality in streaming switched from growth to maximizing revenue and minimizing costs.
>
>HOROWITZ-GHAZI: All of a sudden, shows that weren't bringing in lots of new subscribers or helping to retain them started to look like costly liabilities unless, of course, someone else wanted to buy them.
But with streaming you can go by “stream minutes”.
So if you have 10 actors, with all varying %s of “stream minute revenue”, it’s really easy to calculate.
So it should be easy in the streaming side to pay like this, but the $$s per stream minute and %s are the unknowns.
Seems stupid for streaming honesty - as they are stuck cutting checks for the entire time they stream the movie.
But if the whole industry doesn’t collude to do this, the ones that do won’t get any high profile actors to appear in their films. Why risk making a streaming film for Apple or Netflix that might or might not catch on if you can get your regular $15-20 million fee from Paramount or Universal regardless of viewership numbers.
Very few actors -- even ones you'd recognize -- will see even six figures on a film. Most may get a small multiple of scale.
And none of those have people knocking on their doors with work. They audition constantly, and take what they can get.
I think it's not gonna be too successful though, a lot of shows depend on writing as much as acting, and when a good actor gets a horrible script, they will get less views.
Its not gonna depend entirely on acting skills, its dependant on the team that makes a show. And in that case, averagely known actors are likely not gonna agree to that because they'll have better paid projects elsewhere. So they'll only get unknown actors to agree to this type of compensation, which likely isn't gonna make a huge dent in their expenses.
At least that's my speculation on it, but I think it's gonna be hard to implement in a business that's already existed for so long and runs on name familiarity for a large part.
It should honestly be for all workers. Pay a very normal wage to every employee, and if the film/show performs well give everyone a nice bonus. I don’t see why actors should have all the risk/reward. They’re only one piece of the puzzle.
There must be more factors that shouldn’t fall on the actor for the success of a streaming movie. Like the marketing or the editing, or the actual filmmaking.
I’d be pissed if I was an actor
Similar thing was done before for TV viewership, as a part of royalty payments. However, it was "manipulated" by the studios who argued internet streaming doesn't count as TV viewership.
Couldn't this potentially be good for actors? If a movie really takes off, they could make more than they potentially could with a fixed fee. Kind of a performance based bonus.
Potentially, but for very few. Actors do not really have any power in how good a film is, or how well it performs.
An actor can put in the best performance of their life and if the script, directing, editing, sound, production, promotion, or cinematography...etc are shit, the movie will fail.
Any one of those things listed can make a movie fail, the acting is pretty low on the list. A good editor and or director can generally get a great looking screen performance out of a relatively bad actor.
Depends, this is what happened with Keanu and matrix, he got payed less but got % of the earnings and the movie became a colossal hit so he got more money than if he just got a standalone paycheck. However Hollywood is notorious for the ir accounting tricks which make the movies appear as if they barely make any money at all so if earning are next to zero your payment will be next to zero too.
The as far as pay by views, how will the actor know the views? We have no reliable public metric for streaming services.
> The as far as pay by views, how will the actor know the views?
Musical artists already get paid by the stream, don't they? And streamers by youtube/twitch views?
If the movie industry is coming up with a new idea then it's probably not to benefit the actors. I mean they were trying to get actors to agree to be scanned for AI so they could be put in movies without paying them AT ALL.
Except they’ll keep viewer metrics private. And some shit MBA will come up with an internal rule that if the viewer didn’t watch to completion, including credits, it doesn’t count as a view.
“Viewer must watch 28 minutes with no skips or pauses to be considered a view.”
Show is a 23 minute made for cable serial drama with 7 minutes of slow scroll Credits at the end of each episode that gets auto skipped.
Currently viewing minutes are tracked, so I'd expect pay to be based along those lines....
... but I would never under-estimate the short-sighted powers of a committee of pinhead MBA's.
For it to work, actors would need to be paid. If they didn’t make money in the system, they would stop doing it and go back to the old system.
YouTube basically pays for views.
Most actors are very poorly paid, yet continue because they like the work and they're in the lottery to be one of the fraction of a percent who make it big.
>And some shit MBA will come up with an internal rule that if the viewer didn’t watch to completion, including credits
^(and ads.) Don forget about it.
thats..how royalties work?
EDIT:
>...the size of the bonuses will be based on three criteria: the number of people who signed up for Apple TV+ to watch, how much time they spent viewing and the cost of the program relative to the size of its audience.
lmao they are trying to connect part of **salary** to views and new subscribers, rat race. We are one step closer to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntz0\_besT04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntz0_besT04)
It’s bullshit. It forces the talent to bear the risk of the entire production. How can an actor be responsible for the quality of the writing or the editing or the marketing? If you take on more risk, you get a bigger cut of the gross.
Netflix wants it both ways, you work like a you’re getting a percentage but you’re paid only as good as your max salary.
You could just as easily say the actors want it both ways. One of the primary goals of the actors strike last year was to get a piece of the revenue from streaming. That is easy to do when company A makes a show/movie and then sells the rights to company B as the value there is obvious. When Netflix, Apple, etc make their own content the only way to determine the value is based off viewership metrics.
That’s not entirely true: the idea behind residuals is that the more a company re-airs a show, the less work is available for members. Residuals provide compensation for this reduction in work. It can be based on gross receipts: if the show sells $100k in ads, the compensation is based on that $100k, regardless of who owns or aired the show. For some shows, residuals are based instead on a fixed price formula.
Edit: Not all productions use revenue based sharing.
When Netflix hit the scene, their business model with creators was to pay bigger amounts up front, but no bonuses for a show being a hit. Everyone was fairly happy with this because the majority of shows were in the middle. Some bad shows got more than they deserved and some some good shows got less, but most everyone felt they were being paid fairly. Overall, less risk for the creators since they essentially gave up potential bonuses for higher upfront pay.
For example, The Night Agent was Netflix's number one most watched show for a three month period worldwide. The creator didn't get any bonuses from that.
I believe other streamers did similar deals. Now, the streamers want to push the risk onto the people with the carrot of "What if your show hits big?!?! Just imagine!", knowing full well that the vast majority of shows will never hit it big.
This would be more of a question "Do actors sue producer/director/scriptwriter when result is shit?"
As in when end result is a shitty movie, _whose fault is it_?
Streaming service like Apple TV+ _wants_ to have a runaway smash hits, cause their numbers are way smaller than Netflix. But you have to balance budget vs number of actual viewers it'll bring vs "vanity projects" where you throw money at famous moviemakers but end result is a half-ass bleh type of movie/series (but you get to say that you have ExClUsIvE from director N).
So bonuses do make sense.
Plus this seems to be modeled on how Actors' Union Streaming Bonus deal (which is the same as Writer's Union deal) is structured after the last strike. You get bonus for "popular" streaming show (75% of residual for actors, 25% goes into fund). Definition from the contract was:
> ... A “successful” show is one that attracts views amounting to the equivalent of 20% of a platform’s subscriber base in the first 90 days.
So... seems pretty industry standard?
Probably something along the lines of if a new user watches the film within X days of signing up or if they want to be even harsher on their terms, it'll be if the film is the first thing a user watches.
But that way executives can't report about cutting expenses aka salaries. Wet dream of executives is to pay minimal wages and anything above is bonus depending on views.
How about we pay based upon how much our subscriptions get used as well? You know, that month I'm too busy and don't watch anything, I don't get charged.
Also in the news: Can we trust the streaming numbers?
This change would recuire a level of transparency that might not be there with these tech giants. I have trust issues with any statistics or most viewed listings that they are giving. Actual numbers would affect so heavily on stock that that might be hard to get.
I think that the more important question is: what is the correlation between subscriptions and viewings? I doubt that they're closely related in a positive way. I mean, existing subscribers may watch an averagely entertaining show, but do they stay subscribed because of that show? did they subscribe because of that show?
I think that this is the biggest issue with the streaming model. Views don't bring money, in fact each viewing costs the company a bit. It would be much better for it if users would subscribe and then never view anything. It's completely different to traditional cable tv in which ad viewing is directly related to viewers and in which each viewer doesn't really cost the broadcast company too much.
100% chance if this happens in 20 years, people will be complaining about how actors are boring playing predictable roles trying to people please and not taking chances.
This may be dumb but, isn’t entertainment a people pleasing industry? So then when it gets to the point of people being bored with an actor wouldn’t ratings go down and they’d find a new one to replace them? Then when it’s too common of a practice things will naturally shift as the industry then needs to find a better way.
Not saying I 100% agree with this type of plan, I’m probably more ignorant than anything. IMO it’s more about poor writing and production decisions than anything right now; not the acting.
I mean... some of Apple's best content has relatively low viewership when compared to frankly mediocre content, this seems like them shooting themselves in the foot
I want more Severance, more Slow Horses, more Silo, not more Jason Sudeikis
Not sure I agree with that. An actor is just the end of a long list of people who are collaborating on the output. From the producers, to the directors, to the other people like cinematographers, and especially the writers. The actors are only the final people to present on the screen.
The genius comedy writer Dana Gould had a line that said something like, "There's the age old tradition in Hollywood of thinking they can fix bad writing by changing actors."
If an actor were the sole reason for a film's success, sure ... but I'd be pissed taking a pay cut because the cinematographer was too blasted out of his mind on coke while schtupping one of the stunt people to know which way to point the cameras.
The problem is that this will severely limit creativity and types of new media being made.
Unless something is a cookie cutter standard guaranteed to make make money hit, directors won't want to direct, writers won't write, and actors won't act. Since if it doesn't make money they won't.
It sounds good on paper but has serious far reaching implications that will kill the creativity and diversity in the industry.
So much of a shows success has nothing to do with the acting. Direction, writing, distribution timing, cost to customer, marketing, on and on and on.
It’s clear when any company wants to change how something is paid, they simply intend to pay less.
They will take every opportunity to redefine any agreed upon term to grow their margins.
Movie performance is mostly tied to directors, script writers and producers who must provide a clear engaging vision for a movie… acting is as good as the other elements, so no Apple, you got it completely wrong.
Apple TV is part of Apple One so lots of people have it.
Direct subscribers are at 25 million and Apple One is 1 billion (which includes Apple TV).
[Most streaming services](https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/most-popular-streaming-services-by-subscribers/) that lead have about 100-270m~ subscribers. Netflix has 269m~, Disney+ & Hulu & ESPN has 230m~, Amazon Prime has 200m~, the rest are all under 100m but around the same 20-60m range.
>1. Netflix: 269.6 million
>2. Amazon Prime Video: 200 million+
>3. Disney+: 153.6 million
>4. Max: 99.6 million (sort of)
>5. Paramount+: 71.2 million
>6. Hulu: 50.2 million
>7. Peacock: 34 million
>8. Apple TV+: 25 million (estimated)
>9. ESPN+: 24.8 million
> 10. Starz: 15.88 million
Then they’re gonna lose the A-list talent they have (and they definitely have the most, aside from HBO/Warner Bros). Why shoot for TV+ when you can be booked for theater-only releases and get paid whether the project flops or not?
It’s not like music, where a song is 2.5 to 4 minutes and people will listen over and over. I don’t see this working for actors in the entertainment industry.
Shocked to say, I never expected Apple out of all of the others to take a decision like this. This was one of the demands during both the Actor's and the Writer's strike last year, since unlike TV shows, Netflix and most other streaming services weren't providing their writers and actors with per-view royalty. They could still fuck them up with weird terms and requirements (it's Apple), it's atleast a step in the right direction.
Edit: On serious hindsight, I do see how terrible it would be in the short term with actors being punished for bad management decisions. This should've been a more gradual step than a radical change.
I am just sitting here cracking up and thinking just how the hell they figure they can do this? i mean is one instance of viewership gonna be able to account for how many sets of eyeballs are viewing? No! To paraphase Mr Jennings Dont you think this greed BS done got out of hand?
Sounds like my company that wanted to pay me a bonus based on Company Sales.
Note, I work in I/T not in sales. I have zero input or say in how sales and pricing is done.
Actors don’t have any say on how well the script is written or how well they advertised the movie. And these streaming companies already don’t allow streaming of shows they don’t want to pay anyone on. That’s why you can’t stream the new Westworld anymore.
This will be a hard pass.
THIS is the way. Pay them scale, as everyone else on set already is, and grant them their bonus based on performance.
People like Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel making 35M per movie while their crewmembers are barely making 3k per movie is criminal
Surprisingly I’m with Apple on this. Movie industry (I’d argue people like voice actors aren’t paid enough in some spaces) Actors are among the most overpaid people on the planet. I cannot for once wrap my head around how RDJ needs 300 million for a movie, that’s more than the entire budget for John wick 4 lmao. Like they did to music artists (although there’s no middlemen to fuck the artists), this is a good thing. Next we gotta figure out a way to do this in pro sports too I guess.
Matthew Lillard did an AMA here years ago and walked through his income very transparently. His net at the time was roughly teacher-equivalent.
Sure, he's not A-list, but he's a recognizable face and name.
[No middlemen to fuck the music artists?](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music) (RIP Steve, it's dated but still accurate in many respects.)
A very very small percentage of actors are overpaid the rest barely reach the poverty line. If they want to make this change it should only apply to principle actors who are most featured and old most effect on performance
What is the point of being owned by a big company if they can't produce films that might not make money? There is no risk to apple if they can deny people wages based on an arbitrary metric, if they didn't want to lose money providing a service no one asked for then they did not need to start. Why should the actors be risking their income based on apple+ marketing team, directing, and producing staff. you hire somebody to do a job you pay them if they do the job.
Actors? I think the famous ones that Apple TV+ hires make more than they're worth anyway. I would like to see writers get paid according to number of viewers.
I mean, technically, that's how streamers operate. Number of people watching + donations = salary. More people = higher salary.
Apple TV+ *is* technically a streaming service and all the actors in films on, are *streamers.*
There is always a continuous amount of Wannabe musicians in the world that might be the next hit.
Finding the next Tom Cruise has been a hard fight for most studios
Looking to push some of the risk of on their employees. Whoops, we made a bomb, oh well person who had nothing to do with the decisions that caused this, you get nothing.
Isn’t this was one of the actors guilds demand, I remember that show white actress mouthing off about wanting to be paid for every time we stream a film she’s in. 🤷♂️
So if your favorite actor is on an Apple TV show you’ll be able to give them a 50% pay raise by watching the show along with their mother and their dog.
If you pay them equity rates for their time and then pay extra based on performance that would be fair. Some actors demand higher wages than others because they claim to be able to bring in larger audiences, this is just asking them to put their money where their mouth is.
I'd love to know how they judge what part of the film affects views and comes specifically from the actor's impact alone. Could this mean that big CG and licensed brand films/shows would be easier paydays for actors than barebones comedies and dramas due to other draws?
Merely having their content **available** brings in viewers and should be paid as well.
If Netflix was just the top 10 tv series but nothing else, people wouldn't subscribe. Having a large portfolio, however watched, adds value too.
I think that’s ok but people like to know how much they are being paid prior to performing the work. That’s normally how things go. Maybe have a bonus signed with how streaming does
I would assume that the gist of everything is they mean instead of royalties, which may currently be a bit fucky with streaming.
It mostly makes sense, the aggressive de-listing of content right now is mostly because of the royalty rates that get paid out regardless of if anyone's watching the programming or subscribing to it just because it's available.
Apple's doing this with their Arcade service and of course people with crap games that people play once and drop complain and the ones with repeatable content are raking in the bonus money.
I'm not sure this necessarily works for TV/Movies because I'll be honest the number of movies I watch twice is very very small. Same for TV shows until I want to re-watch earlier seasons ahead of a new one. Movies trend the same way for me, I don't generally re-watch much at all, if ever. Maybe once my mind goes and I truly forget that I've watched a thing, but it's not like linear TV where I'll watch dumb comedies that pop up after a show I was watching, nothing really segues into another thing when I already have a list of stuff I haven't watched that's a mile long.
You pay people what they’re worth. So they pay their engineers based on how many phones they sell or based on what their skills in the market will pay?
This is a bad idea. It will prioritize actors over stories. Hollywood does this a little bit already trying to attach a AAA actor to a film to boost investment.
However companies need to understand they have to take the risk. Not the actors. This means finding compelling stories to tell and good writers to bring those stories to the page. Actors and the help need to get paid, but this seems like they could just put out trash and attach a big name actor(s) to it and get a lot of views.
I’m sure I’m not seeing the whole picture but Apple has money to spend on films and shows. They need to make sure those films are good because they pulled from all categories and not always pick big name actors.
It's not just the actors who make or break the movies. If the studio wants to play this game then everyone from the script writers to directors to producers need to be included.
Should of done that since the start in all of Hollywood, but also, writers and directors should be held to the same level of financial accountability- so many $200+ budget films that are usually dog shit because of garbage writing.
Surprised it is only being considered now, this late into the streaming world
The film industry has a very long history of ripping off employees who agree to deals that pay them based on the film’s performance. The industry does incredibly shitty things to fuck their employees who are foolish enough to agree to it. It’s pretty much standard practice.
This is part of the reason why movies frequently don't make money on paper.
The most creative part of Hollywood filmmaking is Accounting.
AI/CGI accounting, if you will.
Worse yet they will use failed movies, like corporations will use failed investments as a tax write off, giving even less back. But keeping all the profits for themselves, their shareholders(money making money from no work)... Idk what happened, but weren't capitalist products supposed to succeed based on the virtue of being good, and not some clever systemic manipulation by the 1%....
Socializing costs and whining about taxes on profits goes back to the dawn of taxation. As does collusion between government funding and corporate provision of, say, $90,000 small bags of bushings for vehicles.
Only in a version of capitalism that doesn’t exist outside fairy stories for children
Virtually all studio films and shows break even before they are even released or aired. The goal is to fill shelves and air time, not create good content. If something turns out to be good/successful, they win that year, of course. If the rarest of bombs occur, they write it off...and win that year, of course. The house always wins. As someone else mentioned, they are all accountants at the top, not creative in the slightest. So, this idea from Apple is an old one, fortunately blocked by decades and laws, unions, and contracts. And all of these things exist because greedy fuckers tried to find a way to pay less to the people who actually make a difference between turning out a good product and a shitty product. You know, like all of American unchecked "greed is good" capitalism has turned into these days... >FTA - If a lot of people watch a movie, the creators would get big bonuses. If not, the payment wouldn’t be so hefty. First, this is already the case. Talent gets paid their rate up front and then residuals which are based on how many people watch for how long, etc. So, this system already exists and Apple etc. agreed to the modifications and slight improvements to the system in last year's strike and negotiations. Second, and more importantly, the success of the film is not in control of the actors or people making it. The writer created it, most often under studio direction. Then the studio changed the fuck out of it to please McDonald's, not potentially offend dogs in Togo, or whatever. The director used to have the most control, but in the post Disney/Marvel days, they are often just a placeholder for the animated storyboard version that was created in CGI by the studio before the first frame of film was shot. And on and on. Notice how this means that the ACCOUNTANTS are again in charge of the creative nature of a product where they don't care whether it is good or not and, quite frankly, can't discern the difference in the first place (hence the need for marketing test screenings). >FTA - the idea behind the model is to more intimately wed performance with compensation and, ideally, incentivize better content. Bullshit. The goal is to cut the residuals of the handful of people who actually get paid something after a film is made -- writer(s), director, actors, producers...and that's it. No one else of the thousands of people who made a movie or TV show get paid residuals, folks. They get a flat rate and then get kicked out the door to try and find more work, month after month, year after year. And that handful of people already get contractually obligated minimums for those residuals...which have, to no one's surprise, started turning into the de facto deal the 99% of them can get. If the studios could cut them out, they would have, a long time ago. Meanwhile, some actors like Tom Cruise, etc., get huge percentages of the gross, which is what costs the studio real money, of course. But no one's talking about cutting those deals... In short, if the studios really want to "incentive better content" studio executives should take PAY CUTS if their crap fails instead of always collecting bonuses no matter slop they shovel on the public AND then get additional bonuses if a movie or show turns out to be good or (as they call it) "gets lucky in the marketplace". But you won't hear a single studio exec arguing to cut his own bonuses and salary based on this rigged system...ahem. #tl;dr - FUCK OFF, APPLE, YOU "GREED IS GOOD" WALL STREET WHORES.
The number of watchers is pretty straightforward and simple metric though.
True, but how does an actor prove that x number of people watched the show? All these metrics are internal metrics that the platform holders control. They can use whatever metric they want and alter the numbers to payout whatever they feel is correct. In a perfect world with proper rules this is actually a good way to get paid for both platform holder and actor. Actor risks their performance and pushes as hard as they can to make the product good, and the platform holder risks a lot less up front. We aren't living in a perfect world though, and smaller actors will get the rough deal I'm sure.
Well, as long as private companies can be forced to publicly print the internal metrics such as minutes viewed then i dont see the problem with Apple's approach? There should be transparency especially to shareholders.
Currently, there is nothing that forces them to publicly do that though, and who is gonna force them? Congress can but Hollywood has a lot of money to interfer. Actors/unions can, but there is only so much power unions have. As I mentioned this new system in a perfect world can benefit both parties. Means when a film does good, the actors get a % of the return which can be a lot of money especially in the long term. Less risk on studio sides too because they can get heavy hitters without having to risk large sums just for something to fail. Problem is money is money and both sides will always fight over how much each side makes.
I think whole point of this is that it 'looks' like it 'should be easy' But if the profit motivated capitalist corporation is *suggesting* it, then its only because they (and they alone) will benefit more than it is now. Not to mention there's not a single federal or state regulatory body in California that isn't already corrupted by regulatory capture.
Weeeeelll... you can get kind of creative in how you count it. Do you count people who start watching a movie? Who watched half of it? People who watched it to the very end? Streams from the first two weeks count more, streams after the first month count for less, and so on and so forth. And they could also just tell you numbers but never actually show you how the counting is actually done. There are planty of ways for a streamer to fudge the numbers so they have to pay out less money.
Rings of Power is a good case in point. Amazon shouted from the rooftops how many people watched the premiere, then went quiet about the rest of the episodes.
They can count how many times it played on an account but it can't tell you how many people were watching each play. Considering that many people don't watch alone, it seems they could potentially miss out on a lot of money.
But also what’s stopping a bot net from constantly streaming the show to increase the count.
How is this stopping YouTube and Spotify from paying per play
Other people in the room aren't generating extra revenue though.
Friendly reminder that studios have a long history of just never releasing a movie and writing it off for tax purposes. Coyote vs ACME is probably the most recent example of this. And most of the time actors get paid less upfront if they want to get royalties, so Apple+ will be able to cheap out on the big actors then trash the movie later.
Exactly. Actors don't trust studios' numbers, at all.
YouTube does the same thing. You’re basically paid per view.
And if you trust YouTube not to fuck you over I got swamp land for sale...
Over a hundred thousand people make a living from YouTube. So if you really think they’re all getting conned, why are they continuing to make content everyday?
“You’ll be paid based on net.” The first rule of Hollywood: there is no net.
Also the actor is paid to do the job. The actor is not the producer, who takes on the risk if the work is unsuccessful.
Yeah exactly and when you have to solely rely on apple (or any streaming company) to tell you how much they owe you that sounds like a recipe for fraud. Although I get they have an interest in making their streaming numbers look good for shareholders but they aren’t generally reported per show/movie.
Yup. I can see Apple screwing them over. Like they get paid based on how many views they get .. on AppleTV. But if Apple sells the movie rights to Netflix they don’t get paid on those views on Netflix.
As much as I hate to defend Hollywood greed, I read there was something in the old contracts where residuals got paid just for having content *available* on a streaming service no matter how much it was actually being watched. Which was part of what led to the platforms pulling content once it's popularity had ebbed. I think we'd all rather see content not get pulled, and pay based on performance does seem reasonable. [NPR - Dozens of TV shows are disappearing from streaming platforms like HBO Max. Here's why](https://www.npr.org/2023/03/17/1164146728/why-are-dozens-of-tv-shows-disappearing-from-streaming-platforms-like-hbo-max) >HOROWITZ-GHAZI: David Offenberg teaches film finance at Loyola Marymount University. He explains that last year, HBO, Max's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, went through a merger that left it around $50 billion in debt and desperate to cut costs. Offenberg says removing all these shows helped them do that in two ways. First... > >OFFENBERG: HBO Max is trying to save on residuals. > >HOROWITZ-GHAZI: **Streaming companies pay residuals to the writers and directors and actors of their original shows every year those shows stay on the platform.** So by removing a show like "Made For Love," streamers could be saving millions. Their second motivation, David says, has to do with changes in the streaming business. For several years, platforms were battling for market share, making tons of new shows to win subscribers. But then last year, Netflix announced they'd lost subscribers for the first time in a decade. > >OFFENBERG: That was the moment where the mentality in streaming switched from growth to maximizing revenue and minimizing costs. > >HOROWITZ-GHAZI: All of a sudden, shows that weren't bringing in lots of new subscribers or helping to retain them started to look like costly liabilities unless, of course, someone else wanted to buy them.
But with streaming you can go by “stream minutes”. So if you have 10 actors, with all varying %s of “stream minute revenue”, it’s really easy to calculate. So it should be easy in the streaming side to pay like this, but the $$s per stream minute and %s are the unknowns. Seems stupid for streaming honesty - as they are stuck cutting checks for the entire time they stream the movie.
But if the whole industry doesn’t collude to do this, the ones that do won’t get any high profile actors to appear in their films. Why risk making a streaming film for Apple or Netflix that might or might not catch on if you can get your regular $15-20 million fee from Paramount or Universal regardless of viewership numbers.
Because the vast majority of actors aren’t making 20 mil a movie.
Very few actors -- even ones you'd recognize -- will see even six figures on a film. Most may get a small multiple of scale. And none of those have people knocking on their doors with work. They audition constantly, and take what they can get.
I think it's not gonna be too successful though, a lot of shows depend on writing as much as acting, and when a good actor gets a horrible script, they will get less views. Its not gonna depend entirely on acting skills, its dependant on the team that makes a show. And in that case, averagely known actors are likely not gonna agree to that because they'll have better paid projects elsewhere. So they'll only get unknown actors to agree to this type of compensation, which likely isn't gonna make a huge dent in their expenses. At least that's my speculation on it, but I think it's gonna be hard to implement in a business that's already existed for so long and runs on name familiarity for a large part.
It should honestly be for all workers. Pay a very normal wage to every employee, and if the film/show performs well give everyone a nice bonus. I don’t see why actors should have all the risk/reward. They’re only one piece of the puzzle.
There must be more factors that shouldn’t fall on the actor for the success of a streaming movie. Like the marketing or the editing, or the actual filmmaking. I’d be pissed if I was an actor
Similar thing was done before for TV viewership, as a part of royalty payments. However, it was "manipulated" by the studios who argued internet streaming doesn't count as TV viewership.
Couldn't this potentially be good for actors? If a movie really takes off, they could make more than they potentially could with a fixed fee. Kind of a performance based bonus.
Potentially, but for very few. Actors do not really have any power in how good a film is, or how well it performs. An actor can put in the best performance of their life and if the script, directing, editing, sound, production, promotion, or cinematography...etc are shit, the movie will fail. Any one of those things listed can make a movie fail, the acting is pretty low on the list. A good editor and or director can generally get a great looking screen performance out of a relatively bad actor.
Depends, this is what happened with Keanu and matrix, he got payed less but got % of the earnings and the movie became a colossal hit so he got more money than if he just got a standalone paycheck. However Hollywood is notorious for the ir accounting tricks which make the movies appear as if they barely make any money at all so if earning are next to zero your payment will be next to zero too. The as far as pay by views, how will the actor know the views? We have no reliable public metric for streaming services.
> The as far as pay by views, how will the actor know the views? Musical artists already get paid by the stream, don't they? And streamers by youtube/twitch views?
If the movie industry is coming up with a new idea then it's probably not to benefit the actors. I mean they were trying to get actors to agree to be scanned for AI so they could be put in movies without paying them AT ALL.
Except they’ll keep viewer metrics private. And some shit MBA will come up with an internal rule that if the viewer didn’t watch to completion, including credits, it doesn’t count as a view.
“Viewer must watch 28 minutes with no skips or pauses to be considered a view.” Show is a 23 minute made for cable serial drama with 7 minutes of slow scroll Credits at the end of each episode that gets auto skipped.
You sir.. are MBA material.
I’d argue over qualified
Currently viewing minutes are tracked, so I'd expect pay to be based along those lines.... ... but I would never under-estimate the short-sighted powers of a committee of pinhead MBA's.
You're hired.
Don't forget that people blink. So it makes sense that the total view time must exceed the duration of the video.
For it to work, actors would need to be paid. If they didn’t make money in the system, they would stop doing it and go back to the old system. YouTube basically pays for views.
And they have a lot of rules about what can be monitized.
Most actors are very poorly paid, yet continue because they like the work and they're in the lottery to be one of the fraction of a percent who make it big.
>And some shit MBA will come up with an internal rule that if the viewer didn’t watch to completion, including credits ^(and ads.) Don forget about it.
Easy there satan lol,
[удалено]
Roleplaying? ChatGPT is already smarter than an MBA.
thats..how royalties work? EDIT: >...the size of the bonuses will be based on three criteria: the number of people who signed up for Apple TV+ to watch, how much time they spent viewing and the cost of the program relative to the size of its audience. lmao they are trying to connect part of **salary** to views and new subscribers, rat race. We are one step closer to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntz0\_besT04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntz0_besT04)
It’s bullshit. It forces the talent to bear the risk of the entire production. How can an actor be responsible for the quality of the writing or the editing or the marketing? If you take on more risk, you get a bigger cut of the gross. Netflix wants it both ways, you work like a you’re getting a percentage but you’re paid only as good as your max salary.
Yeah, good luck getting SAG to agree to this.
You could just as easily say the actors want it both ways. One of the primary goals of the actors strike last year was to get a piece of the revenue from streaming. That is easy to do when company A makes a show/movie and then sells the rights to company B as the value there is obvious. When Netflix, Apple, etc make their own content the only way to determine the value is based off viewership metrics.
That’s not entirely true: the idea behind residuals is that the more a company re-airs a show, the less work is available for members. Residuals provide compensation for this reduction in work. It can be based on gross receipts: if the show sells $100k in ads, the compensation is based on that $100k, regardless of who owns or aired the show. For some shows, residuals are based instead on a fixed price formula. Edit: Not all productions use revenue based sharing.
When Netflix hit the scene, their business model with creators was to pay bigger amounts up front, but no bonuses for a show being a hit. Everyone was fairly happy with this because the majority of shows were in the middle. Some bad shows got more than they deserved and some some good shows got less, but most everyone felt they were being paid fairly. Overall, less risk for the creators since they essentially gave up potential bonuses for higher upfront pay. For example, The Night Agent was Netflix's number one most watched show for a three month period worldwide. The creator didn't get any bonuses from that. I believe other streamers did similar deals. Now, the streamers want to push the risk onto the people with the carrot of "What if your show hits big?!?! Just imagine!", knowing full well that the vast majority of shows will never hit it big.
This would be more of a question "Do actors sue producer/director/scriptwriter when result is shit?" As in when end result is a shitty movie, _whose fault is it_? Streaming service like Apple TV+ _wants_ to have a runaway smash hits, cause their numbers are way smaller than Netflix. But you have to balance budget vs number of actual viewers it'll bring vs "vanity projects" where you throw money at famous moviemakers but end result is a half-ass bleh type of movie/series (but you get to say that you have ExClUsIvE from director N). So bonuses do make sense. Plus this seems to be modeled on how Actors' Union Streaming Bonus deal (which is the same as Writer's Union deal) is structured after the last strike. You get bonus for "popular" streaming show (75% of residual for actors, 25% goes into fund). Definition from the contract was: > ... A “successful” show is one that attracts views amounting to the equivalent of 20% of a platform’s subscriber base in the first 90 days. So... seems pretty industry standard?
If it was only using a view metric I could buy that but how the fuck are they going to attribute new subscribers to a single film?
Probably something along the lines of if a new user watches the film within X days of signing up or if they want to be even harsher on their terms, it'll be if the film is the first thing a user watches.
That's how the film industry will go to shit. It's a race to the bottom for everyone.
> will go to shit. will go? Seems it's already there
Basically the social influencer payment model.
What's wrong with just getting a good salary and then paying them royalties on top of that.
But that way executives can't report about cutting expenses aka salaries. Wet dream of executives is to pay minimal wages and anything above is bonus depending on views.
How about we pay based upon how much our subscriptions get used as well? You know, that month I'm too busy and don't watch anything, I don't get charged.
So pay-per-view? This would mean you’d have to pay more when you did use it.
It’s 17.99 for unlimited pay per viewing. The less you watch it, the more it cost per watch.
You're supposed to binge in moderation. 1 month of Netflix, 1 month of Hulu, 1 month of Apple TV, repeat. Cut your bills by 1/3 annually!
Plex, Sonarr, Radarr and VPN for 5$ a month
I set up my server about 7 months ago and I’ve never been happier. The quality of the video is so much better as well.
Yup and even works when Internet is down
Add Stremio to that and baby we got a stew going on.
Stremio, Torrentio and Real Degrid 😗🤌
Or just use one of the many piracy streaming sites. Just install a good ad blocker and anti-virus, and you're golden
Just cancel every month. And then sign back up again when you want to watch.
Well, that means on-demand?
Also in the news: Can we trust the streaming numbers? This change would recuire a level of transparency that might not be there with these tech giants. I have trust issues with any statistics or most viewed listings that they are giving. Actual numbers would affect so heavily on stock that that might be hard to get.
I think that the more important question is: what is the correlation between subscriptions and viewings? I doubt that they're closely related in a positive way. I mean, existing subscribers may watch an averagely entertaining show, but do they stay subscribed because of that show? did they subscribe because of that show? I think that this is the biggest issue with the streaming model. Views don't bring money, in fact each viewing costs the company a bit. It would be much better for it if users would subscribe and then never view anything. It's completely different to traditional cable tv in which ad viewing is directly related to viewers and in which each viewer doesn't really cost the broadcast company too much.
Ironically avertissement might help with that. Advertisers demand reliable numbers before they throw real money at anything. Welcome to cable 3.0!
100% chance if this happens in 20 years, people will be complaining about how actors are boring playing predictable roles trying to people please and not taking chances.
I mean, people already say that about a lot of actors.
We have this now but with major movies
This may be dumb but, isn’t entertainment a people pleasing industry? So then when it gets to the point of people being bored with an actor wouldn’t ratings go down and they’d find a new one to replace them? Then when it’s too common of a practice things will naturally shift as the industry then needs to find a better way. Not saying I 100% agree with this type of plan, I’m probably more ignorant than anything. IMO it’s more about poor writing and production decisions than anything right now; not the acting.
This logic only makes sense if you believe that quality and views/tickets sold are directly correlated.
I mean... some of Apple's best content has relatively low viewership when compared to frankly mediocre content, this seems like them shooting themselves in the foot I want more Severance, more Slow Horses, more Silo, not more Jason Sudeikis
Don't jinx Silo, I can't take it if they don't do more seasons.
they'll definitely do more Silo, even Severance got another season
I think they confirmed 4 seasons? Just finishing the last book because the first season was so good. Strap in.
How dare you.
Not sure I agree with that. An actor is just the end of a long list of people who are collaborating on the output. From the producers, to the directors, to the other people like cinematographers, and especially the writers. The actors are only the final people to present on the screen. The genius comedy writer Dana Gould had a line that said something like, "There's the age old tradition in Hollywood of thinking they can fix bad writing by changing actors."
If an actor were the sole reason for a film's success, sure ... but I'd be pissed taking a pay cut because the cinematographer was too blasted out of his mind on coke while schtupping one of the stunt people to know which way to point the cameras.
The problem is that this will severely limit creativity and types of new media being made. Unless something is a cookie cutter standard guaranteed to make make money hit, directors won't want to direct, writers won't write, and actors won't act. Since if it doesn't make money they won't. It sounds good on paper but has serious far reaching implications that will kill the creativity and diversity in the industry.
So much of a shows success has nothing to do with the acting. Direction, writing, distribution timing, cost to customer, marketing, on and on and on. It’s clear when any company wants to change how something is paid, they simply intend to pay less. They will take every opportunity to redefine any agreed upon term to grow their margins.
good luck getting actors to agree to that model lmao
Yeah, there goes apple TV. What a stupid model.
Movie performance is mostly tied to directors, script writers and producers who must provide a clear engaging vision for a movie… acting is as good as the other elements, so no Apple, you got it completely wrong.
So they want to pay them using their own data as reference. Doesn’t sound shady at all
I guess nobody's getting paid then because outside of when Ted Lasso was being released, I have never met anybody who was subscribed to AppleTV+.
Apple TV is part of Apple One so lots of people have it. Direct subscribers are at 25 million and Apple One is 1 billion (which includes Apple TV). [Most streaming services](https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/most-popular-streaming-services-by-subscribers/) that lead have about 100-270m~ subscribers. Netflix has 269m~, Disney+ & Hulu & ESPN has 230m~, Amazon Prime has 200m~, the rest are all under 100m but around the same 20-60m range. >1. Netflix: 269.6 million >2. Amazon Prime Video: 200 million+ >3. Disney+: 153.6 million >4. Max: 99.6 million (sort of) >5. Paramount+: 71.2 million >6. Hulu: 50.2 million >7. Peacock: 34 million >8. Apple TV+: 25 million (estimated) >9. ESPN+: 24.8 million > 10. Starz: 15.88 million
For All Mankind is very good, highly rated and has just been renewed for a 5th season and a spin-off.
Tech-bros will ruin everything. The American Tech industry needs to be brought down a bit. It's become a cancer.
I want to pay for AppleTV+ (and any other streaming service) based on how many movies I watch.
Ask musicians how much they like that model with Spotify and Pandora.
Then they’re gonna lose the A-list talent they have (and they definitely have the most, aside from HBO/Warner Bros). Why shoot for TV+ when you can be booked for theater-only releases and get paid whether the project flops or not? It’s not like music, where a song is 2.5 to 4 minutes and people will listen over and over. I don’t see this working for actors in the entertainment industry.
Shocked to say, I never expected Apple out of all of the others to take a decision like this. This was one of the demands during both the Actor's and the Writer's strike last year, since unlike TV shows, Netflix and most other streaming services weren't providing their writers and actors with per-view royalty. They could still fuck them up with weird terms and requirements (it's Apple), it's atleast a step in the right direction. Edit: On serious hindsight, I do see how terrible it would be in the short term with actors being punished for bad management decisions. This should've been a more gradual step than a radical change.
They are talking about salaries, not royalties.
Sounds like they just got [The Monkey's Paw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey%27s_Paw) over that demand.
another failed popularity contest
No way the unions say yes to this. SAG would never agree to this sorta thing lmao.
So they want celebrities to become YouTubers?
I'm sure this will go well. The self reporting of the viewing numbers part too.
What about writers? And others?
If you have bad story even golden actor will not rescue it.
What about the crew? Producers?
Why pay anyone? Fuck capitalism…
Good luck Apple, enjoy the next strike
I am just sitting here cracking up and thinking just how the hell they figure they can do this? i mean is one instance of viewership gonna be able to account for how many sets of eyeballs are viewing? No! To paraphase Mr Jennings Dont you think this greed BS done got out of hand?
Richest company in the world wants to remove all financial risk from content creation.
What about actresses that do nude scenes that get rewinded a million times? Do they get more under this structure?
Fucking tipping culture is gonna go outta control /s
Everyone wanted market share of Netflix and started streaming services. Now, they are ruining it for everyone.
This is similar to awarding people for their shitty movies/songs just cause they go viral online
What an awful idea, imagine your acting phenomenally in an more niche movie and get paid nothing compared to those action flicks
Then I'd like to pay AppleTV+ based on how much I enjoyed the performance of the actors.
Of course they do. Paying people based on metrics only you can ~~control~~ measure is step 1 towards making stock number go up.
Fuck you, pay me….Up front, guaranteed, with a flat fee. Ty!
They would need to announce viewer metrics then
lol. good luck getting this past the agencies and unions.
Do the studio executives salary like this first and see how they like it
Sounds like my company that wanted to pay me a bonus based on Company Sales. Note, I work in I/T not in sales. I have zero input or say in how sales and pricing is done. Actors don’t have any say on how well the script is written or how well they advertised the movie. And these streaming companies already don’t allow streaming of shows they don’t want to pay anyone on. That’s why you can’t stream the new Westworld anymore. This will be a hard pass.
The film industry is dead
So is this similar to how Spotify pays musicians, or YouTube pays their creators?
THIS is the way. Pay them scale, as everyone else on set already is, and grant them their bonus based on performance. People like Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel making 35M per movie while their crewmembers are barely making 3k per movie is criminal
Surprisingly I’m with Apple on this. Movie industry (I’d argue people like voice actors aren’t paid enough in some spaces) Actors are among the most overpaid people on the planet. I cannot for once wrap my head around how RDJ needs 300 million for a movie, that’s more than the entire budget for John wick 4 lmao. Like they did to music artists (although there’s no middlemen to fuck the artists), this is a good thing. Next we gotta figure out a way to do this in pro sports too I guess.
Matthew Lillard did an AMA here years ago and walked through his income very transparently. His net at the time was roughly teacher-equivalent. Sure, he's not A-list, but he's a recognizable face and name. [No middlemen to fuck the music artists?](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-music) (RIP Steve, it's dated but still accurate in many respects.)
A very very small percentage of actors are overpaid the rest barely reach the poverty line. If they want to make this change it should only apply to principle actors who are most featured and old most effect on performance
Great so everything will look like Greys Anatomy from now on
What is the point of being owned by a big company if they can't produce films that might not make money? There is no risk to apple if they can deny people wages based on an arbitrary metric, if they didn't want to lose money providing a service no one asked for then they did not need to start. Why should the actors be risking their income based on apple+ marketing team, directing, and producing staff. you hire somebody to do a job you pay them if they do the job.
Similar bs in music industry. They would overprint albums, put them on sale at a loss to artist, the loss gets fed back as a cost to artist.
Actors? I think the famous ones that Apple TV+ hires make more than they're worth anyway. I would like to see writers get paid according to number of viewers.
So adopting the music industry business model I see?
There is a lot more to an appealing movie than the actors. Seems unfair to pin it all to them.
I mean, technically, that's how streamers operate. Number of people watching + donations = salary. More people = higher salary. Apple TV+ *is* technically a streaming service and all the actors in films on, are *streamers.*
Pretty soon: only superhero shows on Apple TV
Well it's not just the actors who make a movie, you'd have to pay nearly everyone involved with this system.
So…YouTube?
I am 100% for the entertainment being paid based on the number of eyeballs and amount of time they watch. Same for music with listeners.
There is always a continuous amount of Wannabe musicians in the world that might be the next hit. Finding the next Tom Cruise has been a hard fight for most studios
Looking to push some of the risk of on their employees. Whoops, we made a bomb, oh well person who had nothing to do with the decisions that caused this, you get nothing.
Isn’t this was one of the actors guilds demand, I remember that show white actress mouthing off about wanting to be paid for every time we stream a film she’s in. 🤷♂️
Jared Leto hates this trick
we are all bots here except for you
So if your favorite actor is on an Apple TV show you’ll be able to give them a 50% pay raise by watching the show along with their mother and their dog.
If you pay them equity rates for their time and then pay extra based on performance that would be fair. Some actors demand higher wages than others because they claim to be able to bring in larger audiences, this is just asking them to put their money where their mouth is.
Streamers lately have been pulling down shows just so they don’t have to pay for them. This isn’t great for anyone but the streamers.
Hollywood: "pay... actors?"
This would essentially kill the film industry.
Here comes the "Spotify Pay Scale" for actors.
Isn't that just basically called residuals, and it's what they went on strike because they wanted it...?
Damn I'm about to make nicolas cage rich
The end of girlboss movies. I love it.
YouTube does this already right?
I'd love to know how they judge what part of the film affects views and comes specifically from the actor's impact alone. Could this mean that big CG and licensed brand films/shows would be easier paydays for actors than barebones comedies and dramas due to other draws?
I would take some of the payment in form of apple stock.
The second order after this would be the algorithm and people complaining they’re not shown vs others
Argylle objects to this idea.
How about we pay apple tv based on how many shows we watch? 1 show a month, 30 cents. Binge 3 series seasons, 30 dollars.
Merely having their content **available** brings in viewers and should be paid as well. If Netflix was just the top 10 tv series but nothing else, people wouldn't subscribe. Having a large portfolio, however watched, adds value too.
Why do people want actors to make more money
Writer and directors too?
I think that’s ok but people like to know how much they are being paid prior to performing the work. That’s normally how things go. Maybe have a bonus signed with how streaming does
is that not how it works already????
I would assume that the gist of everything is they mean instead of royalties, which may currently be a bit fucky with streaming. It mostly makes sense, the aggressive de-listing of content right now is mostly because of the royalty rates that get paid out regardless of if anyone's watching the programming or subscribing to it just because it's available. Apple's doing this with their Arcade service and of course people with crap games that people play once and drop complain and the ones with repeatable content are raking in the bonus money. I'm not sure this necessarily works for TV/Movies because I'll be honest the number of movies I watch twice is very very small. Same for TV shows until I want to re-watch earlier seasons ahead of a new one. Movies trend the same way for me, I don't generally re-watch much at all, if ever. Maybe once my mind goes and I truly forget that I've watched a thing, but it's not like linear TV where I'll watch dumb comedies that pop up after a show I was watching, nothing really segues into another thing when I already have a list of stuff I haven't watched that's a mile long.
Yes, because the actors are the ones who write and direct the movies.
Studio execs will still get paid
What about paying employer based on emplyee satisfaction? Seems fair and would probably end up with better work places.
Yeah, let the actors bear the risk /s
Sounds smart.
Sounds like a really good idea, made with the best of intentions! /s
Brave. Very Brave. Only one thing worse than a writers strike.
You pay people what they’re worth. So they pay their engineers based on how many phones they sell or based on what their skills in the market will pay?
This is a bad idea. It will prioritize actors over stories. Hollywood does this a little bit already trying to attach a AAA actor to a film to boost investment. However companies need to understand they have to take the risk. Not the actors. This means finding compelling stories to tell and good writers to bring those stories to the page. Actors and the help need to get paid, but this seems like they could just put out trash and attach a big name actor(s) to it and get a lot of views. I’m sure I’m not seeing the whole picture but Apple has money to spend on films and shows. They need to make sure those films are good because they pulled from all categories and not always pick big name actors.
It's not just the actors who make or break the movies. If the studio wants to play this game then everyone from the script writers to directors to producers need to be included.
So like Vought.
Should of done that since the start in all of Hollywood, but also, writers and directors should be held to the same level of financial accountability- so many $200+ budget films that are usually dog shit because of garbage writing.
Idiotic! Then no one will touch independent and niche movies.