Jorge Caballero, MDSep 28, 2023

Just took another look at the terms that ended the writers' strike and what stands out to me is that the total value of the deal is $233 million/year. To put that into perspective: Disney's streaming revenues were $5.5 billion *last quarter* and Netflix's profit was $1.5 billion *last quarter*

Upshot: the studios and streamers shut down production over a friggin rounding error on their accounting spreadsheet. smdh.

Show threadNate TharpSep 28, 2023
@DataDrivenMD Put another way, Disney+ has over 46M subscribers in the U.S. & Canada alone. Last month they raised their subscription prices $3/month. Just two months of that increase is $276M. More than enough to pay for the entire year of the new contract. By themselves.
Show threadjordanSep 28, 2023
@natetharp @DataDrivenMD Honestly makes me wonder why the WGA wasn't asking for more. Some bigger percentage, at least of profit. I know there are huge costs related to funding the operation of businesses this large, but just their profits alone could be better distributed, unless I'm not a big enough business-brain and I'm missing something. 
Show threadNate TharpSep 28, 2023

@wagesj45 @DataDrivenMD I feel pretty confident the WGA got as much as they could, otherwise they wouldn't have ended it. They had a strong hand and played it very, very well.

As I understand it, there's two things that make your proposal difficult.

1. Generally, asking for a piece of "profits" in Hollywood is fraught. They use accounting gimmicks that result in the production of mega-hit movies like _Forest Gump_ being considered unprofitable. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/19/business/nightcap-hollywood-accounting-strike/index.html

Show threadNate Tharp
@wagesj45 @DataDrivenMD 2. Whether a streaming project is profitable or not is currently a black box. Streaming services protect their performance metrics very, very tightly. So the concession the WGA got on streaming residual boost is quite an accomplishment because it forces streamers to use and report on a standard performance metric. But anything beyond that would be fought tooth & nail by the streaming companies.
Sep 28, 2023 at 5:28amWeb
Show threadjordanSep 28, 2023
@natetharp this is the business-brain i was hoping to hear from. thank you.