Comment on Hollywood Execs Fear Ryan Coogler’s Sinners Deal ‘Could End the Studio System’
xyzzy@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Look at it this way: movies will be around in 100 years; studios may or may not be. The goal is movies.
Is there value in a system that isn’t essential? Writers are essential. Actors are essential. Directors are essential. Camera equipment and marketing are essential, but equipment rental companies and marketing companies exist. Investment is essential for anything larger than a student film, but startups do it every day through the VC system.
Studios consolidate all of that under one roof and streamline it, but that’s not essential. It’s convenient. And no VC demands 100% ownership of the company, so why should studios get that? The execs aren’t the ones working 16-hour days to create something.
The way that it should work is everyone involved in producing the movie should get shares in the enterprise, sized according to their role, down to the best boy. The investors should also get a big cut of shares as well, to make it worthwhile. The holding company that’s created to hold the film’s rights should be run by the biggest shareholders in order to determine future licensing deals. This should all be set out up front in contacts.
Then each worker can build a portfolio of shares and trade them on a market—not alongside companies on, like, Nasdaq, but a separate market, although I could imagine a mutual fund of movie rights appearing on the regular market as well. If the investors or creatives want to buy up worker shares, they can compete to offer up a fair price.
This is also how it should work with video games.
barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 2 days ago
My worry is that these rights reversion deals are going to the top tier film-makers for their top-tier films. In 25 years they’ll revert to the film-maker, and who knows what will happen to them?
What if the director has died? Now the film is in the hands of the estate, who might not know what to do with it, or even care. Some will handle it properly, others wont. Some will be greedy, some may be ashamed of it, some will neglect it, etc.
It’s inevitable that some of these classics will become innaccessible, and even lost.
xyzzy@lemm.ee 2 days ago
They don’t have to do anything. Licensing companies will come knocking with a briefcase of money, and all they have to do is sign. It will likely result in better availability, not worse, because it’s not bound to studios. Studios can hold back releases because they want to release them later, or tie them into a remake schedule, then the remake gets canceled and they never get around to it, etc.
(And although it’s just a hypothetical, in my system above, the rights holders would always be known.)
realcaseyrollins 1 day ago
My only fear is that I think this will make theatrical distribution harder. Give your movie to Lionsgate and they will use your connections to get your movie in the vast majority of theaters. Can one producer or even a team he hires compete with that type of network?
I love going to the movies but I'm sorry, I'm not driving 300 miles just to watch a movie before it hits streaming, even if I really like the director.
xyzzy@lemm.ee 1 day ago
The rights are reassigned after 25 years, so I don’t really think the theatrical release is a concern in this case.