Writers spent 148 days on strike in 2023 in a push to get a much bigger share of the pie of cash constructed from streaming, and in spite of everything that point, some writers should still be questioning what it was all value.
One of many wins from contract negotiations with the studios was that exhibits and movies that attain a sure tier of success on streaming platforms will qualify for a bonus on prime of the prevailing residuals they obtain. Knowledge about how these exhibits carry out additionally needed to be shared with members, however not publicly, so what exhibits have certified because the contract went into impact on January 1, 2024 haven’t been revealed.
Nevertheless, a report in The Ankler on Monday says that a minimum of 5 streaming sequence have certified for and already obtained funds based mostly on the performance-metric bonuses. These sequence are “Bridgerton Season 3,” restricted sequence “Griselda,” and “Avatar: The Final Airbender” all on Netflix, in addition to “Fallout” on Amazon Prime Video, and “Ted” on Peacock.
Within the case of all 5 sequence, credited writers, writers within the writers room, and the pre-greenlight room, are receiving a $9,031 bonus for a half-hour episode or $16,415 for an hour-long episode, per the phrases of the contract. That’s a bonus of fifty p.c on prime of the residual fee. Credited screenwriters on a streaming movie with a funds north of $30 million would additionally get a $40,500 bonus for assembly the edge, although it’s unclear if any movies have crossed that threshold.
Moreover, The Ankler reported that SAG-AFTRA, which negotiated for the same bonus based mostly on streaming outcomes for its performers, has additionally had funds exit to exhibits that premiered on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Paramount+. A rep for the guild confirmed to IndieWire that report is correct, and added that writers engaged on exhibits for Netflix, Prime Video, and Peacock have gotten viewership bonuses, reflecting the precious and highly-viewed content material they created for these platforms.
Whereas solely 5 exhibits have been reported to have obtained the bonus, The Ankler report shared that the bonus isn’t essentially restricted to these sequence. Nevertheless, among the prime exhibits on Netflix corresponding to “Squid Sport Season 2” wouldn’t qualify as a result of it’s a South Korean present with out WGA writers, and different sequence like “Love Is Blind” which have topped Nielsen charts are unscripted actuality exhibits.
To obtain a bonus, a present has to account for a minimum of 20 p.c of a streaming platform’s U.S. customers throughout the first 90 days of it showing on the platform. Moreover, The Ankler reported that funds have to be made inside 60 days of that 90-day window ending, so numerous exhibits that premiered within the again half of 2024 have but to be paid out. SAG-AFTRA has the identical threshold, however actors receives a commission a 75 p.c bonus on prime of their residual, whereas the opposite 25 p.c goes right into a fund that’s distributed to all members, one thing the guild has estimated can be value $40 million yearly. The DGA, which didn’t go on strike throughout contract negotiations, retroactively agreed to the identical phrases.
Whereas “Ted” on Peacock didn’t method the viewing of one thing like “Bridgerton,” it had a neater path to succeed in the 20 p.c threshold. Peacock has 36 million subscribers within the U.S., whereas Netflix just lately reported that within the U.S. and Canada it has over 89 million subs of its general 301 million subs globally. A previous estimate in Bloomberg speculated that maybe solely 5 p.c of all Netflix exhibits would obtain the efficiency bonus.
As many writers beforehand opined, these bonuses don’t match among the numbers veteran writers used to obtain from broadcast tv in residuals, however the negotiations opened a pocket of cash that hadn’t been accessible to creators earlier than on this new period of streaming.