Residuals Are Key to Nearly Every Strike in Hollywood History. Here’s Why
21.09.2023 - 18:31
/ variety.com
Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer What would it take to get a fair residual in streaming? That is the question at the heart of both the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes. It’s also a deep question, with roots in the history of technology and its impact on labor going back nearly a century. Residuals are, now and always, the product of a struggle.
In the simplest terms, they are the payments that artists receive for reuse of their work. Unique to the entertainment industry, they are calculated through obscure and mysterious formulas. When a green envelope arrives in a writer’s mailbox, she often has no idea how many zeros will be on the check.
Residuals are also fiercely defended. In a feast-or-famine industry, they keep artists afloat, and have been the key issue in nearly every strike in Hollywood over the last 71 years. With the transition to streaming, a dramatic overhaul in the entertainment business model, residuals are once again at the center of controversy.
But what are they really? They are sometimes thought of as a piece of ownership, like a patent or a copyright, establishing a claim on a share of profits. But they are not that. In a collaborative medium, the company holds the copyright.
What they are instead is a deferred minimum payment. They are sent out when a recorded work — a soundtrack, a movie, a TV show — is reused in the same medium or sold to a new medium, regardless of whether that reuse turns a profit. At root, residuals are about technology.
Every advance in the mechanisms of recording or distribution poses a both threat and an opportunity to artists. Residuals are a solvent that allows technology to proceed. Artists capture whatever upside they can find, while the residuals
.