81–88 of 88 posts
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This isn’t new. It’s been happening for decades. Right? What’s different now?
A decade getting too much (frankly poor) content instead of not enough of beloved characters/worlds/etc totally devaluing the product.
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So, I've never actually been able to determine what kind of tax deduction[0] or credit would apply to a TV show that loses money. There's rules for how you account for copyrights and patents in tax law, and what kind of business losses you can and can't claim as a deduction or credit. My uneducated guess is that there is no specific law that requires you to mothball a show that's been counted as a loss, but the strea…
> [1] A 'writ of outlawry' is an old legal instrument that allowed courts to withdraw the protection of the law to criminals it could not bring to justice. Murdering them would be legally equivalent to killing a wild (non-endangered) animal. As you might imagine from a legal concept that is effectively The Purge IRL, it is not used anymore. Damn, you had me excited for a second. So there’s no chance I can get one of…
Native species laws would not interact with writs of outlawry. Capturing outlaws and putting them in a safari would be construed as aiding and abetting, which might get you thrown in jail or outlawed yourself.
I suspect if you tried to convince an English court to actually apply a writ of outlawry to someone, they'd write a scathing and condemning response to your request to have someone Purge'd by the small claims court. If you're absolutely itching to see what happens when someone tries to invoke an ancient and unrecognized function of the legal system, then perhaps you might want to watch this video, in which a lawyer reads and explains a legal filing in Iowa that petitions for trial by combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMT9pyilkwA
´ based on a legendary piece of intellectual property. ´ I’d have said ´ book´ instead, but IP and the associated business idea seems to be the new normal for culture. I find it a bit sad.
What do you mean by “new”? Superman and Batman have been around for almost 80+ years. Pokémon is approaching 30 years. Hollywood movies made in the 1920s were remade in the 1930s which were remade in the 1940s which were remade in the 1950s and so on. People have also been writing articles that mention this “new” normal for decades. But when does it stop being “new” lol? How were those new-ish Game of Thrones and Lor…
Whatare the implications of these tax write-offs in terms of piracy? If a company decides it'll never air a show again, what claim of ownership do they still have to prevent pirates from spreading the show for them? I'm sure the studios still be considered the copyright owners, but I don't think there's any ethical reason why they could possibly sue you for releasing something thst they cannot ever release themselves…
They can still make money later and will just pay taxes. Just because they value it at $0 doesn’t mean it has no potential future value. It just means when they claim they value they won’t have any costs to deduct. So future profit margins are higher.
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They can still make money later and will just pay taxes. Just because they value it at $0 doesn’t mean it has no potential future value. It just means when they claim they value they won’t have any costs to deduct. So future profit margins are higher.
It's only an asset if viewers can see it. If they never show it, and never put it on media, it's not an asset and has zero value for tax purposes. So poof Westworld disappears and is no longer an asset.
This is very important for tax purposes as if they ever sell it then they will pay taxes on the full amount sold. If they had a value on books then they would pay the difference of the sales price vs the value on books.
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They can still make money later and will just pay taxes. Just because they value it at $0 doesn’t mean it has no potential future value. It just means when they claim they value they won’t have any costs to deduct. So future profit margins are higher.
Well, yes and no. If they reasonably believe they can make future revenue from it, it would be dishonest (and illegal) to value it at $0. I have no doubt that they are playing funny accounting games, but they have to play within the rules set by the IRS.
Which I’m pretty sure they are following since they are required to follow these and are audited and checked up on by the SEC and others.
But yeah, everyone is doing as funny accounting as possible. That’s why we have laws and rules to specify what’s allowed. And it would be truly insane to talk about this on investor calls and whatnot if it was illegal.
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I think you can monkey around with “Hollywood accounting” for profit sharing purposes as those are all civil offenses with private citizens suing, etc. But I suspect that studios play it straight with taxes as the IRS doesn’t mess around, it’s criminal investigations, officers are liable, and there’s whistleblower laws where the snitch gets 15-30% of what the IRS recoups [0]. So I bet the only way we find the true co…
> So the studio doesn’t want to do this, it’s just less bad. Less bad than what? Apologies if it was outlined in the article, I can't get it to load over my crap connection.
For example. Let’s say the movie costs $100 to make. And they value the movie at $100 based on future sales. And they have $1000 in profit from other stuff they do.
So the cost of$100 and value of $100 offset each other so they pay taxes on the full $1000. Tax rate is 21% so they pay $210 and keep $790.
But if they write off the value to zero that means they have a $100 loss. So you subtract that from the $1000 of profits and pay taxes on $900. Thats $189 in taxes. You subtract that from $1000 and keep $811.
So if they don’t write it off in scenario1 they keep $790, but if they write it off they keep 811.
They still spent $100 and made nothing so that’s bad. But they are able to keep an extra $21 so really only lose $79.
Losing $79 is less bad than losing $100.
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What do you mean by “new”? Superman and Batman have been around for almost 80+ years. Pokémon is approaching 30 years. Hollywood movies made in the 1920s were remade in the 1930s which were remade in the 1940s which were remade in the 1950s and so on. People have also been writing articles that mention this “new” normal for decades. But when does it stop being “new” lol? How were those new-ish Game of Thrones and Lor…
A Star is Born has been remade four times or so