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Disney’s New “Socialism”

The streaming model has effectively eaten the entire television business, allowing the studios to realign who makes what—sometimes to the detriment of top talent.

Bob Iger Rings Opening Bell At NY Stock Exchange
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
July 8, 2021

Back when I was a young lawyer, I’d often get assigned to Hollywood accounting cases. Some big talent—David Duchovny on The X-Files, Peter Jackson with The Lord of the Rings, the showrunners of Home Improvement, to name a few—would make something that earned a ton of money, their backend checks wouldn’t be as big as they’d hoped (or wouldn’t arrive at all), so they’d request an audit and discover the studio was stiffing them on profit participation—their cut of the revenue based on the negotiated definition in their contracts.