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Deleting and destroying finished movies

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Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#321

Post by graeme »

Sebb767 wrote: post #284
graeme wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is this is actually an accelerated capital loss. From a profit-loss perspective the net loss is the same whether they release or not. But the accounting net loss is smaller initially because the movie is on the books as having capital value. It might take decades to reduce that to zero. Destroying the film does so instantly so you get to book the full loss immediately. Never really understood why we use depr…

> Never really understood why we use depreciation in the first place to be honest, rather than just making all expenses immediately deductible. Presumably there’s some explanation It's actually advantageous for most companies. If your company makes 20M in yearly profits and builds a new HQ for 100M and you deduct it immediately, you'd have one year with no taxes and a loss of 80M and 9 years with full taxes. If you w…

But can’t you carry forward the loss? With current capital rules at least in Canada you don’t have to claim capital expenses in a given year.

Politicians often grant accelerated depreciation rates as a tax incentive.

Also with inflation the sooner you can declare the loss the more it is worth. Especially if you have non capital expenses to offset.

The US govt has recently capitalized software expenses and this is seen as very bad for the industry and investment.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#322

Post by ThinkBeat »

UncleMeat wrote: post #304
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 can reasonably imagine a movie that has negative brand value. In a ridiculous scenario, imagine if the first attempt at Iron Man 2 was 90 minutes of Robert Downey Jr engaged in hardcore sex and shouting racial slurs at people. Even if some people are interested in watching (or even buying) this, it should be clear that a studio has the right to destroy it. The studio spent $100m to make this thing. Maybe a compet…

You raise a valid point that I had not considered when it comes to reputation.

I agree that the studio has the right to destroy films. I do think that is unfortunate when they do.

I dont think, but I have no data so its pure speculation, that at least the majority of movies that get destroyed would not have much of a influence on the studio's reputation. Perhaps more for actors or directors.

On your second point I dont quite follow. In my post my suggestion is that after the studio has received its tax credits, the film would be available in the public domain for free.

Post tax break the movie has little utility for the movie.

This may require an adjustment in tax law. I am in no way well versed in that and I have little idea how it works.

The tax code could be amended for this scenario that the work being used for tax credit does not have to be destroyed.

(Again your 1st point is valid and a concern)

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#323

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#324

Post by s1artibartfast »

imgabe wrote: post #247
s1artibartfast wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there is a moral argument for what an ideal world should be like, and legal argument for what the rules are. From the moral perspective, it is clear that WB clearly had real expenses. They spent money, bought rights, and tons of workers were paid good money. Now you pivot to the legal argument. The current law clearly supports what Warner Bros is doing, so that doesnt help you either. like I said before. It seems…

> From the moral perspective, it is clear that WB clearly had real expenses. They spent money, bought rights, and tons of workers were paid good money. Yes, they had expenses . You seem to have a very very rudimentary understanding of accounting and have conflated expenses with losses. An expense is not a loss. If you buy a factory for $1 million, you didn't lose $1 million dollars. You now have an asset, a factory,…

The value of a destroyed movie is zero.

How is that a lie?

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#325

Post by mindslight »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #168

So how do these tax write offs actually work? I'm assuming that when the film is produced, they spend money to receive an asset, no different than e.g. buying a machine. With a machine, they could write it off over time, or (I assume) they can delete the movie/scrap the machine to immediately book the remaining value as a loss? If they don't do that, I think a machine is valued according to the purchase price and wri…

Seriously! So many exasperated comments talking about unfair "tax breaks" and whatnot, and very little examination of the mechanics that actually would support this. It's like the Seinfeld "write off" scene.

From the sec 174 discussions, I had thought that movie production didn't even have to be capitalized? Or maybe that's wrong?

But even with capitalization, you'd think that selling the movie to someone else would accomplish the same thing - fast forwarding the depreciation - but with some additional immediate cashflow, part of which goes to taxes.

Unless the goal is to float this narrative for a year or two. Call the movies worthless for now, but retain control. And then finally "relent", re-value them upwards, and monetize? This would skip the current depreciation period and push taxes into the future.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#326

Post by LoganDark »

interroboink wrote: post #244
LoganDark wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once fell and hit my head, sliced it right open. It was traumatic. Not any of the aftermath like having to go to the hospital or so on. Just my head being hit. I could have died. I could have died. It took me days to process this. There was something in my head for days preventing me from thinking properly, from feeling emotions properly. There was no concussion, no actual cranial damage. It was all psychological t…

I didn't mean to say there's nowhere to draw a line. I meant to say that the question of where to draw the line is open to discussion, in both cases. To be honest, I don't entirely understand your example, since in the first case you're talking about an accident, and we can't exactly pass a law saying "accidents are not allowed." But in the second case, you can pass a law against SA and such. So in my mind, the diffe…

> I don't entirely understand your example, since in the first case you're talking about an accident

I was using it as an example of trauma, that's all. Traumatizing people is bad, right? Sure, you can't really make accidents against the law, but you can stop people from causing trauma intentionally.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#327

Post by dylan604 »

Applejinx wrote: post #295
dylan604 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hoo boy, is this a wild take. With an attitude like that you will get your lunch eaten so fast, by people who are suffering losses of various sorts in order to get to make their creation their way, the way it's supposed to be made. That's universal. I don't care whether it's zombie movies or pop music or any sort of thing you think hollow and worthless. I don't know what industry you're in (tech?) but in the glamour…

Have you ever worked on a film shoot? On longer shoots, the crew probably won't be the same on the last day as it was on the first day. Some people work on projects to fill in the gaps until another project starts. Crews bounce around from gig to gig. Some crews are hired because they are local to the area and it fills quotas for the production to receive some form of incentive.

If you think the PA hired to run errands gives a crap about the project, you are mistaken. Or the construction crew building the set feels the same way the director/producer does, or the set dressers, or the people working the payroll for the project, or any of the myriad of people that work on a project without ever seeing the set, you're just not very familiar with the process

I don't know what industry you're in, but you've seem to have a different opinion of what working a production is like than what actually happens.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#328

Post by AlbertCory »

gruez wrote: post #134
AlbertCory wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't understand accounting, maybe an introductory course would help.

Whatever "introductory course" you took must be pretty bad, because even the elective I took in college taught that valuations on the same asset can go up and down.

apparently they didn't teach about "fair market value" then.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#329

Post by UncleMeat »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #322
UncleMeat wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can reasonably imagine a movie that has negative brand value. In a ridiculous scenario, imagine if the first attempt at Iron Man 2 was 90 minutes of Robert Downey Jr engaged in hardcore sex and shouting racial slurs at people. Even if some people are interested in watching (or even buying) this, it should be clear that a studio has the right to destroy it. The studio spent $100m to make this thing. Maybe a compet…

You raise a valid point that I had not considered when it comes to reputation. I agree that the studio has the right to destroy films. I do think that is unfortunate when they do. I dont think, but I have no data so its pure speculation, that at least the majority of movies that get destroyed would not have much of a influence on the studio's reputation. Perhaps more for actors or directors. On your second point I do…

It isn't a tax credit. It is an offset on profit, same as if the studio spent a bunch of money on preproduction and never got to the principle photography phase or if the studio spent a bunch of money on production but stopped during editing.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#330

Post by qingcharles »

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…

Does art belong to the artist or the public? I only ask because of things like the alterations to Star Wars by Lucas. It felt like he was modifying something that no longer belonged to him.

At the other end of the spectrum you have the Bobs who refuse any manipulation or sequels to Back to the Future and turned down Universal's offer of a 3D conversion of the movies, which I actually thought might be OK.

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