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Deleting and destroying finished movies

rogerebert.com

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Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#191

Post by jb1991 »

ronsor wrote: post #178
ThinkBeat wrote: post #170

Could we not just skip the 30 years of copy right protection or whatever it is now and just release it to the public domain? No money will be made, but if people should want to they can view it. I am sure Internet Archive or some organization would be willing to host such movies, and not make any attempt at making a profit from it. Even better would be to turn all the assets that went into the creating it into the pu…

You're off by almost an order of magnitude there. It's 95 years of copyright protection nonsense, not a mere 30. Edit: very few would complain if it were only 30

That is much less than “almost an order of magnitude.“

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#192

Post by Dylan16807 »

tpmoney wrote: post #143
nerdponx wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the move in the first place. Do tax write offs for corporations work differently than for people? What's the point of spending $90m just to reduce your taxable income by $90m? It's not like corporations have progressive tax brackets. Or did they acquire the movie as part of the acquisition, and are now somehow able to claim a write-off for something they didn't actually spend any money on?

No it doesn't work differently and the framing of all of this in the media is terrible. No one goes into making a movie planning on writing it off. They made a movie and decided that it was actually not going to be something worth releasing / unable to recoup the expenses, so they're not releasing it. This happens all the time with movies at all sorts of various stages of production. It just so happened this movie wa…

It doesn't make any sense to claim that, starting now, the expenses to release are higher than the revenue they would get.

Already-spent money doesn't matter because it's not coming back.

If they cancelled many months ago, the expenses to release would have been a much bigger number. That's why it wouldn't have gotten the same complaints.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#193

Post by onionisafruit »

pradn wrote: post #165
AlbertCory wrote: post #22

Where do you draw the line? If an artist pays a model and paints her, is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting because it sucks, and because the model wants credit? What about a music producer who pays a studio band to record a song that turns out to be terrible -- is the producer prohibited from deleting it? It's the tax write off for destruction that's fucked up, as @cnees says. Failures are part…

Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fa…

Yes I want to live in a world where this happens. It’s a wonderful world even if this particular aspect isn’t great.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#194

Post by SoftTalker »

sokoloff wrote: post #107
AlbertCory wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are confusing "not releasing it" with "claiming a value of zero."

If they irretrievably destroy it, its value becomes zero. That's the essence of being able to claim the tax loss (to "finally determine the value"). It's no different from having a stock position in a company that's in limbo. You can't claim the tax loss and keep the position. You have to get the clearinghouse to take the position for $0 in order to claim the loss. The studio's position is that they've already incurr…

I can't deliberately set fire to the money in my bank account and then write that off as a loss.

The movie is an asset, it has some value, the way to determine that value is to make a good faith effort to sell it (auction or broker of some sort) and if it sells for less than you have spent making it, then you can write off the difference as a loss.

Deliberately destroying the asset and then writing off the entire amount you spent on it is probably tax fraud.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#196

Post by dymk »

gruez wrote: post #104
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't arguing that it's tax fraud by definition, but that it should be considered fraud. If the tax code incentivizes destroying something then that seems like a defect of the tax code.

If you re-read my prior comment, you'd see my complaint is that it's not "fraud" by any reasonable definition because deception is not involved, not that it should or should not be allowed. > "fraud" doesn't mean "losing money in a manner I don't like", so I ask again: where's the deception here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#197

Post by imgabe »

AlbertCory wrote: post #22

Where do you draw the line? If an artist pays a model and paints her, is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting because it sucks, and because the model wants credit? What about a music producer who pays a studio band to record a song that turns out to be terrible -- is the producer prohibited from deleting it? It's the tax write off for destruction that's fucked up, as @cnees says. Failures are part…

The line is at claiming a loss for tax purposes. Destroy the film if you like, but then you get no tax break.

There's a similarity with the "hobby loss rule". In order to be a valid business who can deduct business expenses like losses, you have to demonstrate that you have a "profit intent". That means that you make at least an attempt to turn a profit on your work. If you don't, it's considered a hobby and you don't get to deduct any expenses.

If Warner Bros is going to make movies just to delete them without even trying to sell them, that sounds like they're just indulging in a movie-making hobby rather than being in the movie business.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#198

Post by JeremyNT »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #102
loughnane wrote: post #52

Commenting before I've read the article: That's ridiculous. There's no obligation for anyone to bring something to market regardless of how far along it is. After I read the article: Still not persuaded. It reads like motivated reasoning, the person doesn't like things not getting released and says that governments should step in. There's some mention of taxes and lost work, but nothing tht holds water. As an example…

I’m with you. People see this as some kind of scam, but this is a basic business loss as far as I read it. Just like making a dumb IoT juice squeezer and losing money on it. Every single company on the planet does this.

But I don't understand why destruction is required for the write off.

An IoT juice squeezer is a physical item that costs something to make every additional unit. Every unit you make can actively lose you more money.

Compare to a film.The marginal cost of each digital copy of a finished film is basically zero. The money is already spent.

The only thing I can come up with here are royalties, but they should be based on some percentages of revenue right?

If you release a turd movie that cost 100M to make and only nets you 5m in revenue after royalties, can't you still write off the 95m and have almost 5m more than you would otherwise? How would writing the entire 100m off ever be preferable?

Something is clearly weird where this is advantageous. It's not clear from the article why this trick actually works for movies.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#199

Post by Dylan16807 »

dahart wrote: post #176
advael wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't that WB shouldn't be able to scrap projects. The argument is that the tax break for doing this is bad and should not exist

Except the post very much is arguing studios shouldn’t be able to scrap projects. Did you catch the end? “governments exist (in part) to regulate corporations, in order to stop them from doing things that are deleterious or destructive to the public good and to individuals who work for them.” This isn’t saying the tax break is bad, it’s saying that deleting a film is what’s bad.

> This isn’t saying the tax break is bad, it’s saying that deleting a film is what’s bad.

That's a true statement, though. What's wrong with saying that?

And if you change the tax breaks, you can get the desired behavior without imposing additional rules.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#200

Post by cwkoss »

dylan604 wrote: post #186
pradn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fa…

> A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fall into the void? Very few of those hundreds of people care about the project. Maybe the producer and/or director cares, and maybe the writer. There's a funny shirt that crew members wear with the phrase "I'm just crew. I don't have to know what it's about" that sums up exactly how much they care. Even the acto…

I think you're highlighting the exceptions to ignore the rule
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