Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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
The irony is that even those are done by artists.
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.
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
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%&#$!!!"
That sounds great on the surface, except that it doesn't work that way in real life, because corporations don't pay taxes, as such- they pass them on to others. Who really pays taxes when they're levied on a corporation?
Now, I know you may not care about the last one, but when you tax a corporation, you're really punishing the very people you rely on to spur the economy.
I would start to tax coorporations and individuals in similar manors
A tax, any tax, removes currency from the economy and places it in the government, where some of it may come back into general use again. The state of the economy is not how rich the government is, but how rich the populace is.
so that the little guy, the driving force behind the economy, has more money to spend to keep the economy going.
The "little guy" does very little one way or the other in the economy, or in taxation now. Folks who would fit into this category aren't likely to invest cash into new businesses or technology. They definitely aren't going to actually hire someone.
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.
Are you under the impression that corporations don't pay taxes by the truckload?
Even a small coorporate income tax would provide enough government revenue to reduce the tax burden on the american consumer, and stimulate the economy.
Lost you on this point... You want to raise taxes on the folks that produce the goods that the consumer's are going to buy from? Umm, who do you think actually pays for that? The money that companies pay in taxes really does come from somewhere. You and me.
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).
A tax increase would have given Stan a better contract? You really lost me on that point. Care to work the logic that brought you to that conclusion please?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Even simpler (well, not really simple considering you'd be fighting vested interests) would be trim the damn budget by the 30-50% the GAO estimates is wasted / lost / stolen by the gov't every year. Gov't bookkeeping makes Enron's look honest. The solution wasn't giving Enron more money, and the solution isn't to give the gov't more money either. Let them learn to live on what they've got.