31–40 of 369 posts
Be honest, at least some of you have finished a project before deciding to axe it instead of publishing it. It is any creators right to decide not to publish something.
If the issue is the tax treatment of these circumstances, then fix that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Writing that off as a loss should be considered fraud, especially when there's an offer for it. From wikipedia: >In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Where's the deception here?
That they lost money on the film.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. They would rather delete the movie to claim the tax break than sell it to another studio offering more than the tax break. If you think they actually lost that amount of money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
> That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. Did they not incur such losses? Did they claim to delete the movie but actually kept a backup? Granted, the loss is self-inflicted, but that's not a relevant factor in the tax code.
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…
Damage to the Batgirl franchise brand, damage to the studio reputation, damage to the relationship with the stars, legal fees, etc. could all be reasonably factored in to the studio's judgment to scrap the current WIP.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. They would rather delete the movie to claim the tax break than sell it to another studio offering more than the tax break. If you think they actually lost that amount of money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
> That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. Did they not incur such losses? Did they claim to delete the movie but actually kept a backup? Granted, the loss is self-inflicted, but that's not a relevant factor in the tax code.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. They would rather delete the movie to claim the tax break than sell it to another studio offering more than the tax break. If you think they actually lost that amount of money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
> That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. Did they not incur such losses? Did they claim to delete the movie but actually kept a backup? Granted, the loss is self-inflicted, but that's not a relevant factor in the tax code.
The contrary argument, that a creator has the right to destroy their creation, is made in the Gary Cooper movie "The Fountainhead" (1949).
Even then it's not quite an apples to apples comparison. From what I understand, everyone directly involved in the making of this film is proud of the work and wants it to be released, it's just the bean counters and executives (who I would not consider the "creators" of the film) who want to destroy the creation for ego and tax reasons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not "robbing the people paying taxes" because the money was never theirs to begin with. Taxes are paid on profits, and if profits are not made they're not owed. Suppose I make a painting worth $1000. If I had sold that, I would have been required to pay taxes on that at the marginal rate, say 40% so $400 worth of taxes. Instead of doing that, I set it on fire. Does that mean I just robed taxpayers of $400?
It's not setting the fire which causes taxpayers to lose money, it's writing off the loss against taxes you would have otherwise paid on profits made from other movies.
Seems like a less controversial solution would be to allow the same tax write-off if the studio releases the film for free distribution (e.g. via the Internet Archive), either into the public domain, or under a license like Creative Commons Noncommercial if there's concern about implicitly allowing derivative works by competitors or similar.
This kind of law is especially offensive in the context of rhetoric about social programs, wherein we create all sorts of onerous means-testing on the logic that someone, somewhere might actually be incentivized to use social services to ameliorate various forms of poverty and destitution
In both cases, there is a balancing act wherein allowing too many false positives can create perverse incentives, and allowing too many false negatives fails to accomplish what the policy set out to do. I think a massive corporation taking a loss for making something unpopular is not an outcome we should be trying to prevent with government programs at all, but we are consistently prioritizing it over preventing outcomes like homelessness
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. They would rather delete the movie to claim the tax break than sell it to another studio offering more than the tax break. If you think they actually lost that amount of money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
> That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. Did they not incur such losses? Did they claim to delete the movie but actually kept a backup? Granted, the loss is self-inflicted, but that's not a relevant factor in the tax code.