[fatbird]

I can understand lacking clout to ask for gross, but I have trouble believing that he thought he'd actually get net. When someone like him gets offered net, doesn't he say "look, we both know that 'net' means 'zero', so don't blow smoke up my ass."

ETA: Also, one wonders if relative clout just means asking for a much smaller fraction of gross. Better a tenth of a percent of gross than 10 percent of net.

[waterlesscloud]

I've heard people who are signing deals call net points "monkey points".

Everybody knows they're worthless, but you take what there is.

Having said that, even experienced people might believe that net points would be worth something if a $19 million budget grosses $150 million. Especially on a project with no gross participants.

He might have been able to negotiate performance bonuses, extra money when gross milestones were hit. I've heard of those being a bit more common than gross points.

The bigger the budget, though, the more clout you need to get anything at all. I know of deals where gross points were offered to first timers on sub-million dollar budgets, but when you get up in the 10s of millions, it's a different game.

[dennisgorelik]

Why would offering share of gross revenue be a problem even on big movies? Say, expected gross sales are $100M. Studio may offer to 10 key people in the movie bonus of the size ~0.1% gross revenue per person (~$100K). Spending 1% of revenue on having the team have some skin in the game could well worth it.

Less important hires could get 0.01% gross bonus etc.

Kind of like a startup.

[fatbird]

At a guess, there are two reasons: First, they don't need to offer gross points to get people invested in working on movies, because they already have a steady stream of people desperate to be involved in any way just to be involved or to build experience or to get their big break; and second, if they don't have to, they don't want to because it's less money for them and it establishes a norm of people taking some real money home (a norm that's unnecessary because of the first point).

I was, for a while, peripherally involved in the Canadian film industry, and even in that stunted and low budget arena, there was no shortage of warm bodies to fill any role at all, for virtually nothing but a credit or a line on a C.V.