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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just saw the video with Mandy Moore who said she's received streaming residual checks for This Is Us for as little as $0.01.

Unreal! [/quote]

Mandy Moore made 4.5 million per season for This is Us. More money than most human beings on this Earth will see in a lifetime of working. How much more do you think she deserves "up front" to make up for low residuals? It is hard to feel sorry for her. If she doesn't like the residual check, maybe she should find another career.[/quote]

I still don’t understand why actors deserve residuals. I believe Jack Nicholson didn’t get paid for Batman. Instead he asked for residuals and made more that way than a lump sum. RDJ made more from Iron Man. residuals a year after the release than any working actor in HW. The rich actors can take that risk since they already have money. I’m sure if the studio knew what the residuals were going to be they wouldn’t have agreed.

Pay everyone up front and leave residuals out of it. I don’t get paid from any of my previous jobs for the contributions I made to the company’s success. [/quote]

Residuals are protection for the studios.  They cut down the amount they pay up front to actors and they only have to pay extra for shows that are successful.  You're looking at the success stories. But for every one of those, there are dozens or hundreds of shows that fail, e.g. make less than the cost of producing.  Many of those shows never hit syndication, don't get rerun and don't pay out residuals.  For anything that just barely breaks even or less, it saves the production companies a ton of money.  They paid the actors less up front and they owe them nothing for an unsuccessful show, e.g. they cut their losses.  If they had to pay more up front, all those unsuccessful shows would sink the companies because they'd be recording huge losses for those failed shows.  There are also shows so bad in ratings that they get cut before the full run.  So a show may have had 10 episodes, but the ratings are bad and only 3-5 are shown before the show gets pulled and they sub another show, another pilot, or a popular rerun in the slot.  For those shows, paying lower up front and not paying any residuals for the unaired episodes also saves the production company a lot of money.

There are far more unsuccessful shows than successful ones.  This is how production companies stay in business when they have a string of flops and only have 1-2 good shows in a season.

The successful shows and the top A-listers are the small minority of the population.  Over 140K of the 160K SAG-AFTRA membership are within the danger zone of losing health benefits and also not earning any residuals from streaming productions.  It's a major source of profit for the streaming production companies to skimp on paying the talent.  You can't just the industry based on the RDJs and Cavills of the industry.  That's like saying that we should determine what pay and benefits you deserve based on what the top A-listers in the field can afford.[/quote]

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