Der Art Director von „Obsession“ fordert eine Reform der Branche, nachdem er weniger als 7.000 US-Dollar bezahlt hat, während der Film sich der 175-Millionen-Dollar-Marke nähert
Der Art Director von „Obsession“ fordert eine Reform der Branche, nachdem er weniger als 7.000 US-Dollar bezahlt hat, während der Film sich der 175-Millionen-Dollar-Marke nähert
25 Kommentare
Sounds like he made a bad deal, but who could’ve known that this project would be so successful?
Perhaps everyone should get fractional back-end points.
This was her 2nd production ever. 1st one was another indie film in 2025. Supply and demand.
Yes. On low budget films people get paid less.
Even if technically she isn’t owed more it sucks because you better believe a whole bunch of studio executives will be getting fat bonuses based on the film’s success. The decent move would have been to given each of the HOD’s at least 25k each when it hit the 100 million dollar mark.
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So a contractor gets paid what they put in their contract, and they’re mad because their client now has lots of money?
If they wanted more money then they should have put it in their contract.
Ms. Choi, you made your deal and, unfortunately, no one owes you anything after the fact and it wasn’t an IATSE production. You had no other credits so this movie would have been a steppingstone to your next gig. Has it not?
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They got paid what they felt was appropriate, doesn’t matter what the movie made. They signed the contract.
So if the film had tanked she would have payed back part of the $7000 right???
I mean, the art director is able to ask for a percentage of film revenue as payment.
Another thread where commenters have no idea how movies work and are just projecting their bad financial decisions at people who do what they love instead of working some shitty warehouse because they never finished school.
Why didn’t she fight for points on the back end?
Sorry that’s not how the world works.. She was paid a normal amount for an indie movie with a $750k budget. That production company then sold the finished product for $15 million to Focus Features (Universal).
Having your movie bought at a film festival is the ultimate goal and they pulled it off. You don’t get to demand more money from whatever company wins the bidding war just because the movie does well.
Yeah and people make $10 an hour working at billion dollar companies. Get in line.
They should have a “Bonus” structure for breakaway hits. I get that they excepted the job for a set amount of money and that this experience will lead to better paying jobs. With that being said, putting in a clause that if it blows up and hits some crazy target, a bonus would be reasonable.
Indie only got 20k for her role so I think 7k is fair for art direction on a movie that cost less than a million to maie
How much do Art Directors normally get paid?
A few comments on this one.
1st. Some people are being a little mean to the lady. Is there very little to be done about her complaints? Probably. But we can all see why it would seem a little unfair. She’s probably young and had few resources. Filmmaking is a rough business and I broadly sympathize.
2nd. Just a note on the math. If the movie grosses around $200 million in the end, keep in mind that the distributor gets more like $100 million with the theater owners keeping the rest. Keep in mind that the distributor paid something like $15 million for the film and also had to finance the distribution and advertising of the film. Great profit for the distributor but more like 6x or 6.5x their investment not 200x. Also keen in mind that the distributor never hired her. They just bought a finished film. The filmmakers got that $15 million on a $1 million investment (which is great) but, again, this isn’t as stark as the math initially sounds. Particularly when you consider half of that will probably be going to whoever financed the film. In the end a few people probably walked away with a couple million bucks.
3rd. Crew does not typically have back end deals. Actors and directors get things like residuals for tv snd streaming and may be able to negotiate a percentage of box office. A project being a big success really helps their reputation and their pocketbook but it’s pretty rare for crew to profit as the film profits. Really specific language would have had to be put into their contract for that to occur.
4th. It’s tempting to feel that when a movie makes so much money someone should just share the wealth. The question then becomes who? The distributor made the most money but also has the smallest relationship with the crew and was never their employer. The investor probably made the 2nd most but they also took on the biggest risk. If I risked a million (and it’s a big risk since most independently financed movies don’t make money) and made $6 million I’d probably think that what I got was pretty fair. I also probably had a really good time and am interested in using that money to finance more movies hoping to do it again. This gets you down to the filmmakers (let’s guess it’s something like the director and two producers) who maybe made something like $2 million off of this. If they have 50 people who worked on this and decided to give all of them $10,000…that‘s $500,000. 1/4 of their (pretax) money. When you consider that they also have ambitions and would like seed money for their next project that’s a lot to ask. A lot of the time they see their payback to the crew as getting those people onto the next job where there’s more money and people get paid more and work longer.
Again I sympathize with this woman but I suspect her better play is to stay as tight with then filmmakers as possible in hopes they make another one and this time it’s a full rate union job.
I don’t think the lesson should be that everyone gets paid more on low budget indies (under $1 million). Most of them don’t see their movie back. I’ve produced movies with about $1 million budget – and we are SCRAPPING by. US costs are higher than other countries. We had the option of moving our production out of the country and it being cheaper, but our financier felt strongly about making jobs in his hometown.
If anything, I think low budget movie should offer below the line points – just in case something like this happens.
Hollywood is full of scummy practices. The unions should be demanding 1% of the profits be set aside for crew members. If you think that the idea that artists should be paid for their arts success is radical than you’re a scrub
I would NOT raise a stink about this. She signed the contract, and was paid according to it. This is probably going to make other productions reluctant to work with her.
Some people in this thread really do be on the dicks of studio executives. Glad that we are still looking out for the 1%.
so let’s say this AD hires a plumber to fix their bathrooms before they put it up to sell. i wonder what they would say if the plumber comes back and says they should get more money because the house was sold for more than they had anticipated.
Aka…I didn’t think this would make so much money, but now it did, and I want to be an instant millionaire.
$7k looked like a steal when she thought it would be a YouTube movie, but now, not so much.
Idk, this is a non story.