Contracts and Film in Real Life

Hey y'all so this is my follow-up to my article Understanding Legal Issues in Film Part 2: Before Filming where I described that one of the major issues that filmmakers have to deal with before filming begins is drafting contracts between actors and all of the crew members including the director.  Well after I wrote that article, I have noticed how many contractual issues are happening in the film industry right now.  So I thought I would share some of these articles that I have found in order to show you just how important contracts are in the film industry.

The first article deals with the little known indie film "Wild Horses" starring Robert Duvall, James Franco, and Josh Hartnett.  The article talks about how the production company behind the film had made agreements with the distribution company that detailed how the film was going to be distributed throughout the United States.  However, after the negotiations, both parties had two completely different understandings of the contractual agreements.  So, the production company started to heavily promote their film hoping to debut it at the 2015 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Austin.  However, a few weeks before the film festival the distribution company said that they received a better distribution offer and would not release the right of distribution back to the production company and in so doing, the film cannot be released.  Now the production company is suing the distribution company for breach of contract.  This whole situation shows just how important it is to have strong communication during contract negotiations and know exactly how the other party understands the contracts terms.  This could have been simply avoided if there had been a better mutual understanding.

The next article that I read deals with the every popular X-Men franchise.  In 2011, the studio behind the X-Men franchise started a new series with X-Men First Class.  They gathered a group of young talented actors to play younger versions of the X-Men characters and a new blockbuster series was born. Success only grew as last years X-Men Days of Future Past blew up the box office.  Now in 2016 the next installment of the film series is happening, however after that next installment, some of the actor's contracts are up and if the studio hopes to continue with the franchise, there will have to begin new contract negotiations.  Now most of the cast has stated that they want to do more films, but some have not stated whether or not they want to come back.  So with that being said, the studio has to decide that if they can't get the same cast back, do they recast the role or simple write the character out.  This is a typical problem that faces most production companies that create multiple films in a franchise and even for companies whose filming is taking a longer time than anticipated.  This article shows how important it is to think to the future as well as the present when entering contractual agreements.

Well there you go.  There are just a few real life examples of how contracts can affect studios and movies in general.  What I really want to emphasize with this article is how important communication and understanding is in the filming process.  I hope that this has been helpful.  If you have any questions or comments for me, just email me or leave a comment below.

Thanks again for reading!!