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Stan Lee Sues Marvel Comics
night_flyer writes "In a story that demonstrates the way the entertainment industry manipulates its artists, Marvel is claiming that the 400 Million dollar blockbuster movie Spiderman produced no profits, and they are trying to weasel out of their contract that gives Stan Lee 10% of the profits from his creations. Nuff Said!"
That's a load of crap. You pay a man an honest wage for an honest days work.
Seems like these things have been going on in the comic book industry from the beginning tho.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Surely the studio should cut its losses, and not make the proposed sequel then.
Shareholders should be complaining to the board as you read this.
If you liscence something for a peice of the action always, ALWAYS try and do it based on revenues. Yes, you'll have to settle for a lesser percentage BUT you it is much harder for them to screw you. Basically, you get paid based on a percentage of sales, not profits.
The problem is, it's easy for acountants to find creative ways of including more "expenses" to make it look as though there were no profits. If that happens, then you have to fight it out in court. Revenues are much mroe straight forward, and harder to fudge, so it's much harder to screw you on them.
The part that really gets me is this: ...the company is "in full compliance with, and current on all payments due under, terms of Mr. Lee's employment agreement."
As if Stan Lee were just some burger flipper, instead of the person who created the character that they made $400 millions dollars from.
I've had it up to here with people that seem to think that a corporate lunch every now and then with their buddies makes them "creative".
Maybe we should remove all copyrights on fictional written works for a while? The industry is creating a false sense for would-be-artists that they can make a good living doing what they excel at, but most of them don't get anywhere due to mismanagment and greed. So - copyrights have largely ceased to benefit those who create the works of art.
Why then should we feed the corporations with gullible, naive people out to change the world?
I also get increasinly mad at people who continuously get money because their granddad was a good writer. That somehow is very wrong - as in, all people should have equal opportunity and equal responsibility.
Copyrights on factual works is a bit of a different story. We have not understood the world sufficiently well to do something that drastical to the science community. However, patent reform is direly needed if our industry is going to start growing again - with real growth, not just growth based upon more effective court-room tactics.
Stop the brainwash
developers are getting ripped off
/. holding up its end of the bargin and providing plenty of interesting reading material between the "idle" times at the office? comon, we were recently enlightened about a spanish book about neanderthals
isn't
ripped off indeed.
Remember young Jedi..."percentage of the gross".
That's how Sir Alec Guiness, a man well used to the ins and outs of the film industry, managed to get his money. I believe Peter Cushing got the same deal, although I may be wrong in that. Percentage of the gross, not percentage of the profits.
Cheers,
Ian
Because nobody with money wants it to happen. Duh.
What, did you think you lived in a democracy?
Captain America indeed.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
That might have been the original idea, but get real people. If one were to look at the behavior of the top 100 corporations, does that rule hold true? As corporations weild more political power, they are becoming the equivalent of the ruling class. The only difference now is the rich get to hide behind some corporate name and not subject themself to public scrutiney. The more things change, the more they stay the same people.
The irony is that even those are done by artists.
I've been pretty amused in the past reading all of the comments (some on /. as well) that talked about how the film business "got it" (usually argued from the position of all the extra features and additional content DVDs come with), and how the RIAA, music biz, etal were "out of touch".
This just proves business is business, and the entertainment industry is - what a surprise - very adept at sugar coating their activties until, of course, the lawsuits start flying.
Business is business, and anyone sticking their head in the jaw of the corporate machine has gotta watch out for themselves. I'm sure Stan had attorneys looking after his interests so I don't know what happened there, but I do know that most companies will do anything they can to screw you should the need arise.
And yep; I've got a Masters in Finance so I know of what I speak. A few of our case studies at Uni directly factored in litigation as a "cost of doing business".
Good luck Stan! I've always enjoyed your work and genuinely wish you the best!
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I trade a lot with friends. I buy a movie, when I do, second hand from a second hand store (Hollywood doesn't get their cut that way.) I've given to causes that are willing to fight RIAA and MPAA.
So, what have YOU done? Obviously quite a few of you went to see Spider Man.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I thought copyright stiffled creation? Did he do anything on the film itself? No - well why should he get anything?
There have been enough discussions on slashdot arguing for the restriction of authors copyright - so what is different here?
You pay a man an honest wage for an honest days work.
But... but, that's not the American way! The American way is all about pleasing the shareholders.
Um, no. That is the corporate way. The American way is an honest wage for an honest day's work. The fact that America let large corporations hijack its government and undermine its constitution during the anti-communist ferver of the cold war may mean America kneels beneath their jackbooted heels, but it does not mean that corporatism is the ideal to which the country aspires.
Quite the opposite, in fact, and a backlash to this sort of crap is brewing.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
That's why you NEVER agree to take a cut of the profits. You take a cut of the gross revenue. That way there can be no accounting games.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
The article clearly mentions X2, the Hulk, and Daredevil, but no mention is made of the first X-Men film. Did Lee ever recieve his royalties from this? If so wouldn't this seem to be a precedent in his favor... it didn't do as well as Spider-Man, but it did do rather well nonetheless. If he didn't recieve his well-deserved 10% then why has he waited until now to file suit over it?
Spiderman is one of the many movies that I actually went to a cinema to watch... why? because I respect Stan Lee, and I would rather let him have part of my ticket proceeds rather than pirate the movie off Kazaa or something.
But when shit like this happens, I wonder whether it was worth it. It's amazing how 400mil is not enough to be considered profitable. Last I checked the movie didn't cost a billion bucks to make (I don't think it even costs 500mil).
Thanks Sony... I'll repay you with my unlimited bandwidth.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
More exactly, it's what happens when corporations become publicly traded.
- There's a huge amount of visibility -- everyone saw the movie and knows it made shitloads of money.
- Lee is a revered and sympathetic personality -- nobody wants to see him get screwed over.
- In spite of this, due to the way the contract is worded Marvel is probably correct in their claim that they don't owe him a dime, in the strict legal sense.
End result, Lee loses his money but the public outcry is sufficient to push changes in contract law which provide new protections for artists.Okay, it might not happen this time around -- media conglomerates are hugely powerful and genuine public outcry is hard to come by and expensive to properly focus into action. But the sort of scenario I'm describing is one of the most plausible ways for change like this to be brought about -- goad the public into outrage with an example of a mediagenic victim being screwed by the bad guys. Look at history -- many important pieces of legislation are tied to individual events which raised an outcry out of proportion to their individual significance.
Yes, it's lame when someone gets screwed like this. But it happens all the time, so when it happens in a highly public way that's better for all of us because it contributes to potential reform.
My deviantArt site
Say you have a fleet of limos sitting around to drive executives/actors around. Ah, let's put that all on Spiderman... don't want to lose corporate profit by giving out higher royalties than you absolutely need to. Etc...
The incredibly stupid thing here is that Stan Lee has control over a rather large field of 'intellectual property' that said movie studios may want to draw on in the future, not to mention the sequel(s) of current films.
Imagine... Stan Lee's contract terms for Spiderman III: "5% of gross ticket sales and, oh yeah, %5 of gross ticket sales of Spiderman 1&2 you f%&#$!!!"
I don't speak for any group, but here is what I would do...
I would start to tax coorporations and individuals in similar manors so that the little guy, the driving force behind the economy, has more money to spend to keep the economy going. Right now coorporate tax law dictates that coorporations do not pay income tax, they pay a profit tax, in other words, no increase in net worth, no taxes. Even a small coorporate income tax would provide enough government revenue to reduce the tax burden on the american consumer, and stimulate the economy. This would also make it much more difficult for companies to dodge their financial obligations to the government (see what Marvel is doing to Stan).
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I think 'special effects' was meant like all those fun items listed in the books that list expenses which end up spelling 'no profits'...
;)
In all fairness, Marvel had a hand in making the movie, but I don't think they were the company behind the wheel. Marvel only gets a percentage based on some (probably complex) formula and it souns like Stan Lee gets paid ten percent of what profit Marvel makes off of it. So it IS possible, however unlikely, that Marvel's expenditures to get the movie made are roughly equal to what they get out of it. But... IANAA (I am not an accountant... thank god.
... "I read part of it all the way through." -- Movie Mogul Sam Goldwyn (and some slashdot readers)
And according to my economics textbook, in perfect competition, no company ever makes a profit. After all, if one company was selling their goods at a price that brought them a profit, than some other company should be able to sell for less, and naturally everyone would buy from the cheaper company.
You economics textbook is wrong. Theoretically, one company could always undercut the other, eventually selling everything at, or even below, cost, but this never happens unless a large company is dumping the market.
Basically, it goes like this: if you can sell a widget for $5.00, companies will be willing to produce 100 of them. If you can sell a widget for $10.00, companies will be willing to produce 1,000 of them. If you can sell a widget for $15.00, companies will be willing to produce 1,000,000. (Just example numbers). Now, if a widget sells for $5.00, comsumers will be willing to purchase 1,000,000 of them. If a widget sells for $10.00, comsumers will be willing to purchase 1,000 of them. If widgets sell for $15.00, consumers will be willing to buy 100 of them.
Because supply meets demand at $10.00, that is what the average market price for a widget will be. If you try to sell them for more, you are going to have left-over stock, and if you try to buy them for less, companies are not going to bother producing them.
In perfect competition, therefore, every company makes a profit, but not a profit so great that it hurts the consumer. Unfortunatly, perfect competition is, for the most part,a pipe dream. Fortunatly, the good people running state governments are trying to tax internet sales again, which, as we all know, will make the market much better for everyone.
Thomas Galvin
The point is that the 'media' can manipulate the public perception of their artists as much as they want. Public perception of artists is always on the bubble anyway -- they're dope-addled scofflaws, harlots or raging bolsheviks, or they're promoted to a larger-than-life hero status (if they have a new, big-budget movie about to be released).
I think Stan probably has a great argument, and its something I've suspected about the "zero profit" media industry all along -- there's either fishy accounting, gluttonous overhead costs (coke, whores, lear jets, mansions, parties, lawyers, hush money), or more likely, both -- using the former to justify the latter as expenses.
But Stan will likely get mixed in with all the "bad" Hollywood news and there will be little outcry for his cause as the mud slopped by the likes of Winona, Downey, et al will stain him, too, even though he doesn't deserve it.
Put it in simple terms: the guy who created Spider-Man didn't get a penny from the movie. Joe Sixpack, on hearing that, is going to feel sympathy for Lee. We all know there was plenty of profit to go around, if it weren't for the fuzzy accounting -- Enron, anyone? Lee could be presented as a folk hero, and Marvel comes out of this sounding like Scrooge. Spider-Man is a cultural icon, and it's icons that move the masses into action, not abstract ideals like rights.
My deviantArt site
Working as someone in the entertainment industry, it's very uncommon for these kinds of lawsuits to produce anything. Nothing EVER makes a profit acording to hollywood, because then they'd have to pay their "net points" which are often referred to as "not points" for a reason. You never get anything from them.
Next time Stan, negotiate for gross points and be a rich man.
"And where IS Ditko in all this?"
Good question, but unfortunately, Ditko will *not* do interviews, no way, no how... that's been his stance for years and years and years.
But it would be highly ironic if Marvel subpoeaned him as a witness to detail how HE was the creative force behind Spiderman, and Stan merely filled in the word balloons... of course, then Marvel has to admit it owes Ditko (and Kirby and Wood and etc etc etc) umpteen million dollars...
According to an economics textbook, in perfect competition, a company makes zero economic profit.
Economic profit is different than accounting profit.
Economic profit is accounting profit minus the opportunity cost of the next best thing the person/copmany could be doing. Companies do not report economic profit on their balance sheets. They report accounting profit. Accounting profit is what's at issue here.
If your textbook doesn't explain this, it's probably not a very good textbook.
The concept of economic profit is pretty interesting though. In this case, the movie studio is claiming to have made no accouting profit. This would make their economic profit negative, meaning that the company would have been better off doing something else with it's resources. This is obviously not the case, given the huge success of the movie.
What I imagine they'll do is just reinvest all their profit in the company. Since all the studio people people own stock in the company, they'll still make (theoretical) money because their stock value will rise.
There may still be a legal case here. At a whole company accouting scale they may be able to just reinvest the profit back in to the comapany, but if one looks at just a single picture, then you make be able to prove they made a profit. If they can't prove that all their "expenses" are tied to the picture, then they may not be able to figure them in when they calulated how much money the picture made.
Life is too short to proofread.
It's a valid point that Marvel is the ones to blame in as far as Stan Lee getting screwed, however, a lot of people's eyes are getting opened up to just how corrupt the movie industry is and are brewing up a bitch storm about that, as well.
You're right, though, the blame lies squarely on Marvel for trying to screw over one of their pillars. Marvel's been headed downwards for awhile now, anyways; comic fans have been dropping their subscriptions from them for failing to do anything original for quite some time. Movies may be the only way that Marvel can get money if they continue to act as bastards to their staff.
After all, it's easier to ignore the plot-rehashed crap comics, than it is to ignore seeing comic heroes that you grew up with coming to the big screen.
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I work in the film and music industry (www.PivotEntertainment.com) and am approaced many times to work on indie films that would compensate me on the back end. A back end deal in the film world is profit for theatical release, which very few films (even majors) have. Big money is made in video, TV licensing, etc., which is not covered in a back end deal, unless you have CLOUT the size of Spielberg. With creative Hollywood accounting don't expect to see a return at all on most projects. Marvel is playing the same game. I hope Mr. Lee wins. BTW: Here is how you know if a movie makes money while in the theater. Look at the gross reciepts and divide it in half. Half the money goes to the distributor (often the same company as the film studio, i.e. New Line is distributed by Warner and is owned by Warner but is considered a separate entity), shave off 10% for overhead and the rest goes to the debt of the film. So a 100-million dollar movie needs to make at least 210-million to BREAK EVEN! Just seeing a high gross means nothing to profits if you don't count expense and distribution fees.