Hollywood is much easier to understand if you look at it as a collection of interrelated financial instruments, that also occasionally makes movies.
My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
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Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Unreal: "A WB receipt was leaked online, showing that the hugely successful movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ended up with a $167 million loss on paper. This is especially unusual, given that the Harry Potter film series is the highest-grossing film series of all time."
And these are the people who are trying to police our moral profiles wrt file downloading.
It works because they can. They do it because they've figured that out. It's that simple.
Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#33I don't believe this is HN-relevant.
Derivative works and licensing are a huge part of the software development industry and open source. Edit: Updated for civility.
Agreed. I guess this is akin to workplace environments and retina displays. It's part of our industry, but I still think it's a stretch considering the lawsuit is over a contract between a writer and a studio vs a programmer and company. Similarities admittedly, however I think there's enough more relevant cases to look at than this.
http://www.kansascity.com/news/article8836112.html
http://petapixel.com/2015/01/30/adobe-files-lawsuit-forever-...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/28/five_years_sun_softw...
http://www.eweek.com/mobile/high-court-wants-govt-views-in-g...
Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#34Even if they honor the contract she will get nothing besides being credited. Her contract states that she gets a percentage of the profits - and the movie will probably never make a profit. Return of the Jedi never made a profit "despite having earned $475 million at the box-office against a budget of $32.5 million" (Wikipedia "Hollywood Accounting") Very sad.
If it is well known that the studios use various accounting methods to hide profits, why do the people in the industry still accept contracts based on profits?
Nobody takes net points. Plenty of people take points on the gross, which is fine. Studios know that talent has wised up to net points, but that doesn't stop creative accounting from screwing you over in other ways.
For example, one of Peter Jackson's main grievances when he sued New Line was that he had been promised a cut of the revenue from merchandising right sales. New Line sold the merchandising rights to its own sibling and subsidiary companies using a closed bidding process at well below market rates.
Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#35Here's the whole ruling: https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wb-gravity-... It's more complicated (of course) than Gerritsen makes it out to be. The Hollywood Reporter does a decent job of explaining the contours: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/warner-bros-knocks-... (and, in fairness, it's more complicated than WB makes it out to be as well). Most of the ruling concerns itself with the admissi…
> Most of the ruling concerns itself with the admissibility of various documents for the purposes of a dismissal ruling, which is complicated by the fact that the court has to stipulate all of the plaintiffs facts as true and still find no cause for a lawsuit in order to grant the motion.
To add some more color: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 only requires a complaint to allege facts, which if proven true, would make out a cognizable legal claim. A defendant may make, under Rule 12(b)(6), a motion to dismiss a complaint on the basis that the plaintiff fails to raise a cognizable claim.
In evaluating such a motion, a court cannot look beyond the four corners of the pleading, and to certain authoritative documents (official records, etc). So a defendant cannot attach a bunch of documents to negate the allegations in the claim, because at this early stage the plaintiff has not had the benefit of discovery and so cannot challenge the defendant's documents with his own. Frankly, courts can get pretty sloppy about this, but the judge here did a good job and excluded from consideration most of the documents Warner Bros. attached to their answer.
Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#36"I will receive “based upon” credit, a production bonus, and a percentage of net profits." Wait ... I don't know anything about anything and even I know you don't ever stipulate profits in a film rights contract ... right ?
That's why there's also a "production bonus", but more importantly credit.
Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#37I don't believe this is HN-relevant.
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."
Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#38What's wrong with these people? Why couldn't Warner Brothers reach out to Tess and say "Hey, we're going to produce a sci-fi film based on GRAVITY. We'd like to work with you and are interested in re-negotiating your contract for a new version of the story." You know, acting in good faith. Instead they just screw her, no recognition, no money? How is that the default thought process for a company? This may be vindict…
Well, some of the issues seem to be:
1. The movie "Gravity" is primarily an action/special-effects pageant about an astronaut trying to get safely back to Earth after an accident destroys the space station she was on. The book "Gravity" is a medical techno-thriller about a doctor in space fighting a disease outbreak on a space station. Reasonable people can probably disagree about whether the movie, given its significantly different plot, is even a derivative of the book at this point.
2. The lawsuit was not regarding plagiarism, but rather for breach of contract related to the film rights for the book. Gerritsen alleges that Warner Brothers was bound by and failed to observe the terms of a contract she had signed with a company which became a subsidiary of New Line, which in turn became a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The court found that even if all allegations in her complaint were taken to be true, they still would not establish that Warner Brothers was bound by that contract. This mostly seems to depend on the arcana of contract law and how mergers and acquisitions pass obligations on (or don't pass them on), and suggests that the main issue was either she or her attorney did not sufficiently understand those arcana (given that she apparently contracted for a percentage of net rather than gross, a lack of experience in what makes a good contract for film rights seems likely) in order to build a successful complaint.
Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#39What's wrong with these people? Why couldn't Warner Brothers reach out to Tess and say "Hey, we're going to produce a sci-fi film based on GRAVITY. We'd like to work with you and are interested in re-negotiating your contract for a new version of the story." You know, acting in good faith. Instead they just screw her, no recognition, no money? How is that the default thought process for a company? This may be vindict…
Well, some of the issues seem to be: 1. The movie "Gravity" is primarily an action/special-effects pageant about an astronaut trying to get safely back to Earth after an accident destroys the space station she was on. The book "Gravity" is a medical techno-thriller about a doctor in space fighting a disease outbreak on a space station. Reasonable people can probably disagree about whether the movie, given its signifi…
Did you miss the part about the person who wrote the script for the movie being involved in the original project, based on the book?
Re: My Gravity lawsuit and how it affects every writer who sells to Hollywood
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, some of the issues seem to be: 1. The movie "Gravity" is primarily an action/special-effects pageant about an astronaut trying to get safely back to Earth after an accident destroys the space station she was on. The book "Gravity" is a medical techno-thriller about a doctor in space fighting a disease outbreak on a space station. Reasonable people can probably disagree about whether the movie, given its signifi…
Did you miss the part about the person who wrote the script for the movie being involved in the original project, based on the book?
Did you miss the part where this was a contract issue? Where the author of the book said, literally, "Yeah, Gravity is a great film, but it's not based on my book"? She's trying to argue that a contract she made with one company would somehow jump across multiple acquisitions, mergers and organizational changes and begin binding a different company that made a movie she admits wasn't based on her book. And that's why it comes down to contract law, and contracts do not represent an easy, straightforward, intuitive body of law.
You don't particularly have to like the way that stuff works, but the simple truth is that changing it to make it work the intuitive and desired way in this particular case would probably result in many more other types of cases suddenly coming out in ways you wouldn't like.