‘They sent a thank you note and $5,000 – the movie made $1bn’
August 10, 2021 8:16 AM Subscribe
Marvel and DC face backlash over pay (The Guardian) – As the comics giants make billions from their storylines and characters, writers and artists are speaking out about their struggles for fair payment
The “big two” comic companies – Marvel and DC - may pretend they’ve tapped into some timeless part of the human psyche with characters such as Superman and the Incredible Hulk, but the truth is that their most popular stories have been carefully stewarded through the decades by individual artists and writers. But how much of, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) $20bn-plus box office gross went to those who created the stories and characters in it? How are the unknown faces behind their biggest successes being treated?
I'm not surprised at all - we've devalued creative labor to the point that consumers view it as their right.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:26 AM on August 10, 2021 [48 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:26 AM on August 10, 2021 [48 favorites]
The thing that chaps my ass about this:
I actually know a guy who used to write for Marvel, and who worked for both Iron Man and The Winter Soldier during both of their runs. The creators of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier TV show apparently thought he was pivotal enough to the series that they included his name on Bucky's "amends list" as a shout-out.
But he's been struggling a lot lately (he is public about this on Facebook) and I can't help but think that paying him something would have mattered a good deal more than having his name be on a list you only see for a couple seconds.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:52 AM on August 10, 2021 [58 favorites]
I actually know a guy who used to write for Marvel, and who worked for both Iron Man and The Winter Soldier during both of their runs. The creators of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier TV show apparently thought he was pivotal enough to the series that they included his name on Bucky's "amends list" as a shout-out.
But he's been struggling a lot lately (he is public about this on Facebook) and I can't help but think that paying him something would have mattered a good deal more than having his name be on a list you only see for a couple seconds.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:52 AM on August 10, 2021 [58 favorites]
I support the writers and artists in this; there's plenty of money to go around. But "creative rights" is sort of problematic for many of the most famous superhero characters. Sure, Bob Kane created Batman, but Bill Finger invented most of the iconic Batman paraphernalia (Batcave, Bat Signal, the Batmobile, Robin, etc, etc). Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created The Fantastic Four, but aren't the Four an awful lot like the Challengers of the Unknown, that Kirby had previously created for DC? How much was Stan and how much was Jack is an old guessing game. Do you give credit to Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson for creating the Swamp Thing, without acknowledging the indelible imprint that Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette left on the character? (Heck, don't even get me started with the X-Men!)
posted by SPrintF at 8:52 AM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 8:52 AM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
So Why Are There No Comic Book Unions Then?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:58 AM on August 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:58 AM on August 10, 2021 [7 favorites]
I think there is a monologue from Goodfellas that applies... Executive level management always ensures they get paid with salaries, bonuses, incentives and golden parachutes. Keeping track of authors and artists should be a known task - determining their royalty structure should be calculable.
But... of course it isn't... because these corporations are psychotic... They are all about maximizing their profits from quarter to quarter - and screw you if you are the little guy.
posted by rozcakj at 9:03 AM on August 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
But... of course it isn't... because these corporations are psychotic... They are all about maximizing their profits from quarter to quarter - and screw you if you are the little guy.
posted by rozcakj at 9:03 AM on August 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
I've never really stopped thinking about something that was pointed out to me long ago: that Disney bootstrapped itself on work that existed in the public domain (Grimm fairy tales, Greek myth, Lewis Caroll, etc) and then, when the company had grown large enough to influence federal legislation, pulled the IP drawbridge up behind itself to extend copyright effectively forever, protecting its own property from ever entering that space. After Disney strip-mined public IP, the next obvious step is to use their size to buy out everything else.
There's a lot of talk that, for better or worse, Marvel and DC have effectively become our modern mythology. The difference is that these myths are owned, their creators obscured except for some scrolling fine print at the tail end of the credits. Sure, we can mess around on the edges of fanfic and wear our cosplay, but anything that breathes the faintest whiff of competition, anything that looks too professional - see Paramount's response to the Axanar production - gets sued into non-existence.
It's important to these companies to act like the originators don't exist, brief comedic cameos of Stan Lee aside. It's the "not invented here" syndrome writ large. They're great at taking ideas, but dealing with work-for-hire creators is messy, embarrassing, and inconvenient, so they don't do it.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:06 AM on August 10, 2021 [61 favorites]
There's a lot of talk that, for better or worse, Marvel and DC have effectively become our modern mythology. The difference is that these myths are owned, their creators obscured except for some scrolling fine print at the tail end of the credits. Sure, we can mess around on the edges of fanfic and wear our cosplay, but anything that breathes the faintest whiff of competition, anything that looks too professional - see Paramount's response to the Axanar production - gets sued into non-existence.
It's important to these companies to act like the originators don't exist, brief comedic cameos of Stan Lee aside. It's the "not invented here" syndrome writ large. They're great at taking ideas, but dealing with work-for-hire creators is messy, embarrassing, and inconvenient, so they don't do it.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 9:06 AM on August 10, 2021 [61 favorites]
As a consumer of creative work, one who readily associates such work with the creators, I would assume that the creators are the ones reaping the rewards. But creative work that requires production, and thus other people who support the creators in bringing their work to the public is a whole other story. Movies, comics, and music are all full of stories where the creators are ultimately ripped off by the production companies. The work wouldn’t exist except for the creators. But maybe the companies aren’t, in their minds, dealing with art, instead they are dealing with products. And thus profit. The creators are just a part of the production crew. As much as comics fans rave about the writers and the artists who create the comics, as consumers they are just supporting this system. There was once a time when people thought that digital technology and the internet would free people from the need for production and distribution support, freeing them to be their own publishers. But can you make a living on the internet where everyone expects everything to be free? It’s all a nasty business. (Maybe Alan Moore was right?)
posted by njohnson23 at 9:11 AM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 9:11 AM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
But "creative rights" is sort of problematic for many of the most famous superhero characters.
Studios seem to do a competent job figuring out the points for all of the producers, executive producers, assistant producers. They can do the same with creative contributions.
posted by Silvery Fish at 9:14 AM on August 10, 2021 [26 favorites]
Studios seem to do a competent job figuring out the points for all of the producers, executive producers, assistant producers. They can do the same with creative contributions.
posted by Silvery Fish at 9:14 AM on August 10, 2021 [26 favorites]
Studios seem to do a competent job figuring out the points
Had a friend who had already been working for 3-years on royalty distribution software systems, back in 1997. This is not rocket science, it's just that they don't want too re-distribute the profits equitably.
posted by rozcakj at 9:55 AM on August 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
Had a friend who had already been working for 3-years on royalty distribution software systems, back in 1997. This is not rocket science, it's just that they don't want too re-distribute the profits equitably.
posted by rozcakj at 9:55 AM on August 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
I really doubt any assistant producers are getting percents of the gross profits, and otherwise "points" mean nothing, notoriously.
posted by tavella at 9:57 AM on August 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by tavella at 9:57 AM on August 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
What blows my mind about this is the number of people on Twitter not only getting angry at writers, artists and actors wanting a bigger piece of this gigantic pie, but claiming that their "greed" may imperil the production of future comic book movies and tv shows by cutting into the profits of these poor ol' entertainment conglomerates.
If you've ever listened to much sports talk radio, this will sound pretty familiar to you. Irate callers will unleash their rage at the "greedy" players for negotiating big contracts but won't make a peep about how the Billionaire owners exploit their workers (at every level), extort their home cities and hold them for ransom whenever they want to build expensive new stadiums on the taxpayers' dime, and gouge their fans at absolutely every turn.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:04 AM on August 10, 2021 [25 favorites]
If you've ever listened to much sports talk radio, this will sound pretty familiar to you. Irate callers will unleash their rage at the "greedy" players for negotiating big contracts but won't make a peep about how the Billionaire owners exploit their workers (at every level), extort their home cities and hold them for ransom whenever they want to build expensive new stadiums on the taxpayers' dime, and gouge their fans at absolutely every turn.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:04 AM on August 10, 2021 [25 favorites]
I think it's about time that these old contracts and rights get re-visited so that the creators get more than these pittances. In the old days I don't think anyone on the comics side was making a lot of money so yes the Big Two were screwing their creators over but they weren't living large themselves. The Sony and Fox movie deals kept Marvel alive for a while but they weren't doing great until Iron Man and getting bought out by Disney made them richer than God (not that the publishing comics side of things is doing great even now).
Creators who are still in the industry now have a lot more scope for working on titles that they own and that will get enough attention so that people walking into a comic shop will buy them so I have less sympathy for someone like Ed Brubaker because yes he created the Winter Soldier but he knew the deal, his writing for Marvel got him a big enough profile that he could put out Criminal with a good sized readership. The big news over the last weeks is Scott Snyder making a deal with Comixology and Dark Horse to put out a line of titles, and now Nick Spencer, James Tynion IV, Jonathan Hickman, and others are going to be putting out titles on Substack. They all will still work for the Big Two because of course they'd still want to write Batman, Spider-Man, and the like, but they're doing their own stuff and will be able to reap the rewards from that if they do well. But if you were a writer 20+ years ago and are out of the industry now then you probably didn't get paid all that much then and aren't going to have much of an audience if you tried to do something creator-owned now so for sure if their work is used in a huge movie or tv show then they need to be properly paid.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:08 AM on August 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Creators who are still in the industry now have a lot more scope for working on titles that they own and that will get enough attention so that people walking into a comic shop will buy them so I have less sympathy for someone like Ed Brubaker because yes he created the Winter Soldier but he knew the deal, his writing for Marvel got him a big enough profile that he could put out Criminal with a good sized readership. The big news over the last weeks is Scott Snyder making a deal with Comixology and Dark Horse to put out a line of titles, and now Nick Spencer, James Tynion IV, Jonathan Hickman, and others are going to be putting out titles on Substack. They all will still work for the Big Two because of course they'd still want to write Batman, Spider-Man, and the like, but they're doing their own stuff and will be able to reap the rewards from that if they do well. But if you were a writer 20+ years ago and are out of the industry now then you probably didn't get paid all that much then and aren't going to have much of an audience if you tried to do something creator-owned now so for sure if their work is used in a huge movie or tv show then they need to be properly paid.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:08 AM on August 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've never really stopped thinking about something that was pointed out to me long ago: that Disney bootstrapped itself on work that existed in the public domain (Grimm fairy tales, Greek myth, Lewis Caroll, etc) and then, when the company had grown large enough to influence federal legislation, pulled the IP drawbridge up behind itself to extend copyright effectively forever, protecting its own property from ever entering that space. After Disney strip-mined public IP, the next obvious step is to use their size to buy out everything else.
This also illustrates another dynamic in IP protections - while short term / “lifetime” IP protections protect artists, longer term “legacy” IP protection can actually harm people who create for a living. If you write for Superman your individual contribution is deprecated because the conventional wisdom is that the “value” is in the character not the writer/editor/artist. This is patently false, but it appears that the only way to correct the dynamic would be to allow this “new mythology” to be released into the public realm, where it belongs.
posted by q*ben at 11:12 AM on August 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
This also illustrates another dynamic in IP protections - while short term / “lifetime” IP protections protect artists, longer term “legacy” IP protection can actually harm people who create for a living. If you write for Superman your individual contribution is deprecated because the conventional wisdom is that the “value” is in the character not the writer/editor/artist. This is patently false, but it appears that the only way to correct the dynamic would be to allow this “new mythology” to be released into the public realm, where it belongs.
posted by q*ben at 11:12 AM on August 10, 2021 [6 favorites]
They could give them screenwriter credits and then they can end up like Ed Solomon and work on zillion-dollar-grossing movies that somehow never made a profit.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:31 AM on August 10, 2021
posted by rmd1023 at 11:31 AM on August 10, 2021
They sucked his brains out! hit the nail on the head. Comics creators have been exploited since the days of Siegel & Shuster. The reason the people who actually came up with The Winter Soldier were paid a fraction of anyone in that show's writers room is thanks to the WGA.
If Disney or AT&T could make every writing gig contract work-for-hire, they would. Look at what Disney is trying to do with residuals for licensed books they acquired during the Lucasfilm and Fox purchases. Again, they didn't go after screenwriters - they've got a union behind them. They went after the person who wrote the spin-off novels. And when they have tried to mess with the payout on screenwriters, the WGA has sued them, instead of being sent a strongly worded letter from the SFAA.
posted by thecjm at 12:14 PM on August 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
If Disney or AT&T could make every writing gig contract work-for-hire, they would. Look at what Disney is trying to do with residuals for licensed books they acquired during the Lucasfilm and Fox purchases. Again, they didn't go after screenwriters - they've got a union behind them. They went after the person who wrote the spin-off novels. And when they have tried to mess with the payout on screenwriters, the WGA has sued them, instead of being sent a strongly worded letter from the SFAA.
posted by thecjm at 12:14 PM on August 10, 2021 [9 favorites]
I get to the end of this thread, thinking of how long this has been going on, how exploitative pop culture industries are (and as a burnt-out former animator mainly working in TV, oh boy do I know), and then I remember famed Disney Duck comic creator Don Rosa, and why he quit. It still saddens me that the only way he could ensure royalties on his work was by copyrighting his name across multiple continents. Maybe more Western comics creators should look into that.
He has led a fortunate life, in different ways mine has been fortunate, but I feel we are a little similar in how let down we were by the systems we worked within.
posted by May Kasahara at 1:14 PM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
He has led a fortunate life, in different ways mine has been fortunate, but I feel we are a little similar in how let down we were by the systems we worked within.
posted by May Kasahara at 1:14 PM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
I have less sympathy for someone like Ed Brubaker because yes he created the Winter Soldier but he knew the deal, his writing for Marvel got him a big enough profile that he could put out Criminal with a good sized readership.
Brubaker's been doing creator-owned work since at least the eighties (I may still have a copy of Lowlife #1 around somewhere); I think that he knew very well that Marvel would completely own his revised version of Bucky Barnes, including any adaptations in other media. (The Winter Soldier debuted in 2005, a few years before the MCU formally debuted, but Marvel characters had already started to appear in big-budget movies.) I still think that he deserved at least a decent "gift" check for his work, as did other comics creators, but I don't think that the amount of credit (and corresponding royalties or other payments) is that easy to assign--how much, for example, is owed the estate/family of Jack Kirby, who actually created Bucky, vs. Brubaker? (Calculating how much Kirby's legacy would be worth is almost impossible, as he not only created or co-created the bulk of Marvel's character, but also the Fourth World/New Gods characters that much of the DCEU's former, and maybe still current, plans for their own movie franchise depended upon. Simply put, modern superheroes as we know them mostly wouldn't have existed without him.)
The Hollywood Reporter article that much of the Grauniad piece seems based upon is a bit more positive about the potential ability of creators who have gone public in order to get more credity and money.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:40 PM on August 10, 2021
Brubaker's been doing creator-owned work since at least the eighties (I may still have a copy of Lowlife #1 around somewhere); I think that he knew very well that Marvel would completely own his revised version of Bucky Barnes, including any adaptations in other media. (The Winter Soldier debuted in 2005, a few years before the MCU formally debuted, but Marvel characters had already started to appear in big-budget movies.) I still think that he deserved at least a decent "gift" check for his work, as did other comics creators, but I don't think that the amount of credit (and corresponding royalties or other payments) is that easy to assign--how much, for example, is owed the estate/family of Jack Kirby, who actually created Bucky, vs. Brubaker? (Calculating how much Kirby's legacy would be worth is almost impossible, as he not only created or co-created the bulk of Marvel's character, but also the Fourth World/New Gods characters that much of the DCEU's former, and maybe still current, plans for their own movie franchise depended upon. Simply put, modern superheroes as we know them mostly wouldn't have existed without him.)
The Hollywood Reporter article that much of the Grauniad piece seems based upon is a bit more positive about the potential ability of creators who have gone public in order to get more credity and money.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:40 PM on August 10, 2021
But maybe the companies aren’t, in their minds, dealing with art, instead they are dealing with products.
There's no "maybe" about it.
posted by soundguy99 at 1:40 PM on August 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
There's no "maybe" about it.
posted by soundguy99 at 1:40 PM on August 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Comics creators have been exploited since the days of Siegel & Shuster
There's a subsidiary interview in there that is pretty interesting. Labor laws protect the movie studios by preventing creators from organizing, using similar loopholes (for example) that Uber exploits to keep drivers ("independent contractors") from forming a union.
As what happened with said drivers in the UK, it may be up to the creators to decide amongst themselves when they've had enough exploitation, as a group. Outside of the narrow fantasy of comics, it is difficult to fight multinational corporations as an individual. I don't know enough about the comic book world, so feel free to correct me, but if it is made up of a lot of Frank Miller types, then I suspect any kind of coordinated response may be a bit difficult.
Perhaps cooperation might have been easier in the earlier days of comic books, when it was a lot of Jewish working-class first-generation immigrants who created the characters and stories — the aforementioned Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster being canonical. Jack Kirby, Stan Lee. (Maybe Chris Claremont, influence- and storywise, though not American(?)) Communist and socialist movements in 1900s America overlapped with Yiddish-speaking immigrant communities. Not a rule, per se, but perhaps a lot of Golden Age stories sprung out of the Depression, where heros fought corrupt government and business officials.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:56 PM on August 10, 2021
There's a subsidiary interview in there that is pretty interesting. Labor laws protect the movie studios by preventing creators from organizing, using similar loopholes (for example) that Uber exploits to keep drivers ("independent contractors") from forming a union.
As what happened with said drivers in the UK, it may be up to the creators to decide amongst themselves when they've had enough exploitation, as a group. Outside of the narrow fantasy of comics, it is difficult to fight multinational corporations as an individual. I don't know enough about the comic book world, so feel free to correct me, but if it is made up of a lot of Frank Miller types, then I suspect any kind of coordinated response may be a bit difficult.
Perhaps cooperation might have been easier in the earlier days of comic books, when it was a lot of Jewish working-class first-generation immigrants who created the characters and stories — the aforementioned Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster being canonical. Jack Kirby, Stan Lee. (Maybe Chris Claremont, influence- and storywise, though not American(?)) Communist and socialist movements in 1900s America overlapped with Yiddish-speaking immigrant communities. Not a rule, per se, but perhaps a lot of Golden Age stories sprung out of the Depression, where heros fought corrupt government and business officials.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:56 PM on August 10, 2021
Perhaps part of it, too, is the drive to reduce every act of storytelling of the last few millennia to monetized intellectual property, as much as our culpability in consuming it as product. I can't find it now, but someone recently reviewed The Green Knight online, celebrating that the Welsh legends of King Arthur are now a franchise that all can enjoy. It is a sad fate for epics of (my) culture passed down over centuries to be degraded to something now owned and squeezed by rent-seeking movie studios that have little respect for any history they can't immediately make millions from, but that may be the result, for the time being.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:09 PM on August 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:09 PM on August 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
WTF is up with a movie being considered a failure unless it makes back 500% or whatever? No other business runs like that, and I feel like maybe it's the (or a) bedrock of Hollywood Accounting that keeps the studios motivated to rip off creatives and contributors.
posted by rhizome at 2:12 PM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 2:12 PM on August 10, 2021 [4 favorites]
I know an animator who used to work for Marvel and they wouldn't even give her a Disney+ subscription so she could check out her own damn show.
posted by thebots at 2:32 PM on August 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
posted by thebots at 2:32 PM on August 10, 2021 [13 favorites]
The whole notion of owning an imaginary character or an imaginary world is weird. I don't know quite how to think about it.
When these imaginary properties are traded, I always feel like it's *me* that's really being bought.
I'm a big Tolkien fan, but when Amazon paid some $250 million for the rights, I don't believe it was because his stories were intrinsically $250 million better than the next writers'. It's because they know there are some 10s of millions of people like, sigh, me, who are probably each willing to pay a little something for TV with a Lord of the Rings connection.
So Tolkien's estate gets a reward for Tolkien having written books that a lot of people liked. Does this all make sense? I don't know.
posted by bfields at 3:01 PM on August 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
When these imaginary properties are traded, I always feel like it's *me* that's really being bought.
I'm a big Tolkien fan, but when Amazon paid some $250 million for the rights, I don't believe it was because his stories were intrinsically $250 million better than the next writers'. It's because they know there are some 10s of millions of people like, sigh, me, who are probably each willing to pay a little something for TV with a Lord of the Rings connection.
So Tolkien's estate gets a reward for Tolkien having written books that a lot of people liked. Does this all make sense? I don't know.
posted by bfields at 3:01 PM on August 10, 2021 [5 favorites]
bfields:
"The whole notion of owning an imaginary character or an imaginary world is weird. I don't know quite how to think about it."
I own lots of imaginary characters and worlds. It's not really weird at all. I thought them up and fleshed them out, and the law allows me the right to have a say in how they are used, unless I cede those rights to someone else. This is great, because through that work, I can feed my family and pay my bills. Eventually the rights will go to the public and everyone will own them. For now, however, I get to keep them.
The law that allows me to feed myself is the same law that allows Disney/Warner Bros to make billions off the characters and worlds they own. There is, mind you, an issue of scale, which is (to put it politely) non-trivial.
Also, I do all my worldbuilding myself -- I don't farm it out to others, which is what Disney/WB do. All their work is work for hire, which means that the person doing the work doesn't keep the rights. It's easy to say "well, people who do work for hire know what they're getting into" when they do the work, but I think most people also understand that the scale of what's going on changes the tenor of the deal from a fair(ish) exchange of work and payment into something that feels exploitative -- especially because the sums the individuals get are so small relative to the return the IP owner can receive.
I've made a conscious decision over the course of my writing career to develop my own characters and worlds, not only because that's more interesting to me, but also because from a business point of view it gives me much more leverage in how my work is used and how I am compensated for the work that gets done. When my work is optioned now, we always ask for (and usually get) some sort of producer credit, which both keeps me in the development loop and makes sure I participate in backend. We also make sure to reserve as many rights as possible and to make sure that I get paid for sequels, spinoffs and any derivative use. If the people who want to option the work don't want to do any of that, we don't let them option it.
This is not to suggest that people who do work-for-hire work are chumps or foolish; my situation is my own, not necessarily comparable to anyone else's, and I've always had the luxury of being able to say "no." But it does mean that when it comes to the development and exploitation of my creative work, I don't have to sit there, hat in hand, hoping someone might be shamed into throwing me crumbs. Because they are my characters and my worlds. And nothing gets to happen to them without me.
posted by jscalzi at 4:45 PM on August 10, 2021 [51 favorites]
"The whole notion of owning an imaginary character or an imaginary world is weird. I don't know quite how to think about it."
I own lots of imaginary characters and worlds. It's not really weird at all. I thought them up and fleshed them out, and the law allows me the right to have a say in how they are used, unless I cede those rights to someone else. This is great, because through that work, I can feed my family and pay my bills. Eventually the rights will go to the public and everyone will own them. For now, however, I get to keep them.
The law that allows me to feed myself is the same law that allows Disney/Warner Bros to make billions off the characters and worlds they own. There is, mind you, an issue of scale, which is (to put it politely) non-trivial.
Also, I do all my worldbuilding myself -- I don't farm it out to others, which is what Disney/WB do. All their work is work for hire, which means that the person doing the work doesn't keep the rights. It's easy to say "well, people who do work for hire know what they're getting into" when they do the work, but I think most people also understand that the scale of what's going on changes the tenor of the deal from a fair(ish) exchange of work and payment into something that feels exploitative -- especially because the sums the individuals get are so small relative to the return the IP owner can receive.
I've made a conscious decision over the course of my writing career to develop my own characters and worlds, not only because that's more interesting to me, but also because from a business point of view it gives me much more leverage in how my work is used and how I am compensated for the work that gets done. When my work is optioned now, we always ask for (and usually get) some sort of producer credit, which both keeps me in the development loop and makes sure I participate in backend. We also make sure to reserve as many rights as possible and to make sure that I get paid for sequels, spinoffs and any derivative use. If the people who want to option the work don't want to do any of that, we don't let them option it.
This is not to suggest that people who do work-for-hire work are chumps or foolish; my situation is my own, not necessarily comparable to anyone else's, and I've always had the luxury of being able to say "no." But it does mean that when it comes to the development and exploitation of my creative work, I don't have to sit there, hat in hand, hoping someone might be shamed into throwing me crumbs. Because they are my characters and my worlds. And nothing gets to happen to them without me.
posted by jscalzi at 4:45 PM on August 10, 2021 [51 favorites]
But he's been struggling a lot lately (he is public about this on Facebook) and I can't help but think that paying him something would have mattered a good deal more than having his name be on a list you only see for a couple seconds.
Yeah, but they gave him *exposure*, right? [rolls eyes]
I've lost track of the number of times i've been asked to do work for free in exchange for publicity.
posted by Snowflake at 10:06 PM on August 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Yeah, but they gave him *exposure*, right? [rolls eyes]
I've lost track of the number of times i've been asked to do work for free in exchange for publicity.
posted by Snowflake at 10:06 PM on August 10, 2021 [3 favorites]
Studios seem to do a competent job figuring out the points for all of the producers, executive producers, assistant producers. They can do the same with creative contributions.
I think it's a lot more complicated than with people working directly on the film. That's looking at a single production, and you can define who worked on it pretty easily. How do you define the contributions of different people over 70 years?
Just look at Bucky Barnes. Need to figure out how much it's Kirby and Simon's creation of the original character, how much is Brubaker and Epting's revival and adaptation of the Bucky into The Winter Soldier (which wouldn't have had the same poignancy without him being Cap's old sidekick), how much more they might get because The Falcon's fulfilling Bucky's role from the comics in becoming Cap, how much of the character is due to appearances in team comics with different writers over time, etc, etc.
The fact that the character was dead for a long time makes this a relatively simple one to me as well. SPrintF mentioned the X-Men as a particularly thorny one earlier on, you can look at The Avengers in the same way. Multiple individual creators, a team that's evolved over time, and an MCU plot that's heavily drawn from The Ultimates rather than the main Earth-616 Avengers. Watchmen was originally meant to use Charlton originating characters in the main DC continuity (Nite Owl is Blue Beetle, Dr Manhattan is Captain Atom, Rorschach is The Question, etc), so do you penalise Moore and Gibbons there in favour of those character's original creators?
Definitely agree that there needs to be some higher form of compensation for creators who had a significant impact on characters or plots used in adaptations, but I don't think it's at all simple.
posted by MattWPBS at 5:27 AM on August 11, 2021
I think it's a lot more complicated than with people working directly on the film. That's looking at a single production, and you can define who worked on it pretty easily. How do you define the contributions of different people over 70 years?
Just look at Bucky Barnes. Need to figure out how much it's Kirby and Simon's creation of the original character, how much is Brubaker and Epting's revival and adaptation of the Bucky into The Winter Soldier (which wouldn't have had the same poignancy without him being Cap's old sidekick), how much more they might get because The Falcon's fulfilling Bucky's role from the comics in becoming Cap, how much of the character is due to appearances in team comics with different writers over time, etc, etc.
The fact that the character was dead for a long time makes this a relatively simple one to me as well. SPrintF mentioned the X-Men as a particularly thorny one earlier on, you can look at The Avengers in the same way. Multiple individual creators, a team that's evolved over time, and an MCU plot that's heavily drawn from The Ultimates rather than the main Earth-616 Avengers. Watchmen was originally meant to use Charlton originating characters in the main DC continuity (Nite Owl is Blue Beetle, Dr Manhattan is Captain Atom, Rorschach is The Question, etc), so do you penalise Moore and Gibbons there in favour of those character's original creators?
Definitely agree that there needs to be some higher form of compensation for creators who had a significant impact on characters or plots used in adaptations, but I don't think it's at all simple.
posted by MattWPBS at 5:27 AM on August 11, 2021
Yeah, but they gave him *exposure*, right? [rolls eyes]
posted by Snowflake
eponysterical!
In northern climates, we often joke about how exposure has another meaning...
In the winter, you can die from too much "exposure"...
posted by rozcakj at 7:38 AM on August 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Snowflake
eponysterical!
In northern climates, we often joke about how exposure has another meaning...
In the winter, you can die from too much "exposure"...
posted by rozcakj at 7:38 AM on August 11, 2021 [2 favorites]
jscalzi: Eventually the rights will go to the public and everyone will own them.
Not if Disney can help it.
And I'm sure they're working on that pesky first sale doctrine - all they have to do is figure out how to put some DRM on physical books and then I can license everything and own nothing. (I try to vote with my wallet and purchase DRM-free ebooks, so, all kinds of props to your friends at Tor (among others) for making that a thing I can do.)
posted by rmd1023 at 7:52 AM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
Not if Disney can help it.
And I'm sure they're working on that pesky first sale doctrine - all they have to do is figure out how to put some DRM on physical books and then I can license everything and own nothing. (I try to vote with my wallet and purchase DRM-free ebooks, so, all kinds of props to your friends at Tor (among others) for making that a thing I can do.)
posted by rmd1023 at 7:52 AM on August 11, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's easy to say "well, people who do work for hire know what they're getting into" when they do the work, but I think most people also understand that the scale of what's going on changes the tenor of the deal from a fair(ish) exchange of work and payment into something that feels exploitative -- especially because the sums the individuals get are so small relative to the return the IP owner can receive..
This is prompting a sincere question.
At the time that my acquaintance made his work-for-hire deal with Marvel, the very notion of movies being made based on comic books no doubt seemed unlikely - it was in the 1990s and the only "superhero" movies which had thus far been made were the handful of "Superman" films and the various "Batman" films, and both franchises seemed to be sputtering (this was pre-Heath Ledger as Joker, remember). No doubt this was reflected in a lot of other creators' contracts, and there are a great many other people who made similar deals with similar assumptions. There's very little way any one of them could have predicted "hang on, in 10 years that dude from Swingers is going to hire that guy who just got put in jail for doing coke and they're going to make a movie that will singlehandedly launch an entire media franchise."
I admit to unfamiliarity with the way these kinds of things work - but is there any precedent for adding a clause to such contracts that covers "and you would also get a modest percentage if some new franchise gets developed based on characters you created, even if it seems really flippin' unlikely now"?
I mean, I understand that Marvel/DC legally has the right to assume all rights of its work-for-hire team. But it's kind of like how the landlord of my old building legally had the right to jack my rent up and push me out by doing so - they may legally have had the right to do that, but morally it still feels like a super dick move.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:53 AM on August 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
This is prompting a sincere question.
At the time that my acquaintance made his work-for-hire deal with Marvel, the very notion of movies being made based on comic books no doubt seemed unlikely - it was in the 1990s and the only "superhero" movies which had thus far been made were the handful of "Superman" films and the various "Batman" films, and both franchises seemed to be sputtering (this was pre-Heath Ledger as Joker, remember). No doubt this was reflected in a lot of other creators' contracts, and there are a great many other people who made similar deals with similar assumptions. There's very little way any one of them could have predicted "hang on, in 10 years that dude from Swingers is going to hire that guy who just got put in jail for doing coke and they're going to make a movie that will singlehandedly launch an entire media franchise."
I admit to unfamiliarity with the way these kinds of things work - but is there any precedent for adding a clause to such contracts that covers "and you would also get a modest percentage if some new franchise gets developed based on characters you created, even if it seems really flippin' unlikely now"?
I mean, I understand that Marvel/DC legally has the right to assume all rights of its work-for-hire team. But it's kind of like how the landlord of my old building legally had the right to jack my rent up and push me out by doing so - they may legally have had the right to do that, but morally it still feels like a super dick move.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:53 AM on August 11, 2021 [4 favorites]
but is there any precedent for adding a clause to such contracts that covers "and you would also get a modest percentage if some new franchise gets developed based on characters you created, even if it seems really flippin' unlikely now"?
Without having any actual experience myself (and IANAL), my understanding is that "work for hire" actually has some fairly specific conditions spelled out under US copyright law, so at the very least such a clause would be the first thing struck out by the publisher's/studio's lawyers, since accepting said clause would muddy the waters of whether it was truly work for hire.
posted by soundguy99 at 3:56 PM on August 11, 2021
Without having any actual experience myself (and IANAL), my understanding is that "work for hire" actually has some fairly specific conditions spelled out under US copyright law, so at the very least such a clause would be the first thing struck out by the publisher's/studio's lawyers, since accepting said clause would muddy the waters of whether it was truly work for hire.
posted by soundguy99 at 3:56 PM on August 11, 2021
EmpressCallipygos:
For a rank-and-file sort of creator, Disney/Warner (or indeed any other very large IP holder) is highly unlikely to offer a percentage of any future earning for a work-for-hire agreement. First because they don't have to: There are more than enough writers who are willing to do work-for-hire with a standard contract, and second because establishing a precedent in a contract that favors the creator and obliges the company to track a payment in perpetuity is something neither the legal nor the accounting departments want to do, ever. Unless required by law to do otherwise, these work-for-hire contract terms are unlikely to change.
posted by jscalzi at 7:08 PM on August 11, 2021
For a rank-and-file sort of creator, Disney/Warner (or indeed any other very large IP holder) is highly unlikely to offer a percentage of any future earning for a work-for-hire agreement. First because they don't have to: There are more than enough writers who are willing to do work-for-hire with a standard contract, and second because establishing a precedent in a contract that favors the creator and obliges the company to track a payment in perpetuity is something neither the legal nor the accounting departments want to do, ever. Unless required by law to do otherwise, these work-for-hire contract terms are unlikely to change.
posted by jscalzi at 7:08 PM on August 11, 2021
It is a sad fate for epics of (my) culture passed down over centuries to be degraded to something now owned and squeezed by rent-seeking movie studios that have little respect for any history they can't immediately make millions from, but that may be the result, for the time being.
It will, and it will be terrible, if the comic book and comic book film "Thor" is anything to go by.
posted by Dysk at 3:43 AM on August 12, 2021
It will, and it will be terrible, if the comic book and comic book film "Thor" is anything to go by.
posted by Dysk at 3:43 AM on August 12, 2021
There are more than enough writers who are willing to do work-for-hire with a standard contract, and second because establishing a precedent in a contract that favors the creator and obliges the company to track a payment in perpetuity is something neither the legal nor the accounting departments want to do, ever.
Yeah, there's an odd sense of something like destiny involved in the thinking that really isn't there to a substantial degree. If the studios were required to give points for a project under certain laws, then they'd find a way to make the project that got around that. So if, say, the use of Winter Soldier somehow forced the studio to give up a percentage of the gross, then Winter Soldier wouldn't be used and some other workaround character would take his place.
To be sure, the studios are banking heavily on name recognition, as audiences are much more likely to go see a movie with some basis in the known than they are an unknown work, unless or until there is sufficient word of mouth suggesting the movie is extraordinary, which is not what franchise films are based on. They are built on the idea of the known, but which "known" will be dependent as much on how the studios expected return on the investment for that world and group of characters as a bottom line return. If the points or other financial considerations make the investment riskier for considerable profit, then the studios look elsewhere. Disney went to Marvel because the ran the figures and tied it to their entire corporate projection, theme parks, streaming, ancillary sales and all else including the accompanying bid for the Star Wars properties to establish a stranglehold on a certain nostalgia market.
If the major characters, like Captain America and Iron man, had come with a heavy additional price for the creators, then they would have either tried to buy out those terms before the films were made or priced it in as a cost and maybe gone a different route if that cost was too high. The creators are coming forth because they are looking at the end result of massive profits, if the films hadn't done well then there would be little talk of wanting a cut as there wouldn't be one.
The assumption that the creators are "more" responsible for the success than they've been credited is also tricky, the plots are often more window dressing than draw as the popularity of the movies is much more complex than tracing it to a light borrowing of story in many cases. In some of the "big" events from the comics there is some gain in the familiarity involved, like with Marvel's "Civil War", but that's fit to a movie conception of star and attitude driven spectacle that requires that specific plot much less than it might first appear.
None of that is to argue the creators do or don't "deserve" more money, it's a difficult issue to piece out into a easy moral lesson under the system they all have worked under and more or less understood as the way things are. One's perspective on this is of course more likely to favor the "little guy" creator over the studio, even though the movies are fit to the Disney brand as much as the Marvel one, like from my perspective even five grand would be a huge boon, so deciding who gets the huge paychecks for modestly pleasing work is all in the realm of excess to me.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:04 AM on August 12, 2021
Yeah, there's an odd sense of something like destiny involved in the thinking that really isn't there to a substantial degree. If the studios were required to give points for a project under certain laws, then they'd find a way to make the project that got around that. So if, say, the use of Winter Soldier somehow forced the studio to give up a percentage of the gross, then Winter Soldier wouldn't be used and some other workaround character would take his place.
To be sure, the studios are banking heavily on name recognition, as audiences are much more likely to go see a movie with some basis in the known than they are an unknown work, unless or until there is sufficient word of mouth suggesting the movie is extraordinary, which is not what franchise films are based on. They are built on the idea of the known, but which "known" will be dependent as much on how the studios expected return on the investment for that world and group of characters as a bottom line return. If the points or other financial considerations make the investment riskier for considerable profit, then the studios look elsewhere. Disney went to Marvel because the ran the figures and tied it to their entire corporate projection, theme parks, streaming, ancillary sales and all else including the accompanying bid for the Star Wars properties to establish a stranglehold on a certain nostalgia market.
If the major characters, like Captain America and Iron man, had come with a heavy additional price for the creators, then they would have either tried to buy out those terms before the films were made or priced it in as a cost and maybe gone a different route if that cost was too high. The creators are coming forth because they are looking at the end result of massive profits, if the films hadn't done well then there would be little talk of wanting a cut as there wouldn't be one.
The assumption that the creators are "more" responsible for the success than they've been credited is also tricky, the plots are often more window dressing than draw as the popularity of the movies is much more complex than tracing it to a light borrowing of story in many cases. In some of the "big" events from the comics there is some gain in the familiarity involved, like with Marvel's "Civil War", but that's fit to a movie conception of star and attitude driven spectacle that requires that specific plot much less than it might first appear.
None of that is to argue the creators do or don't "deserve" more money, it's a difficult issue to piece out into a easy moral lesson under the system they all have worked under and more or less understood as the way things are. One's perspective on this is of course more likely to favor the "little guy" creator over the studio, even though the movies are fit to the Disney brand as much as the Marvel one, like from my perspective even five grand would be a huge boon, so deciding who gets the huge paychecks for modestly pleasing work is all in the realm of excess to me.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:04 AM on August 12, 2021
With movies like Guardians of the Galaxy or Suicide Squad the vast majority of people buying movie tickets have never heard of the comics so it isn't as if the work of creators like Jim Valentino, Dan Abnett, or John Ostrander, was being particularly appreciated and needed to be referenced for the films. But again these films have made bajillions of dollars so why not pay out the creators some amount that while significant to them would still be considered rounding errors in the grand scheme of things?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:10 AM on August 12, 2021
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:10 AM on August 12, 2021
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