Ben Affleck is calling for a change in the way Hollywood does business. After years of seeing artists struggle for fair compensation and creative control, he and longtime friend and collaborator Matt Damon have co-founded Artists Equity. This new production company is designed to give creators a greater stake in the projects they bring to life. Through this company, Affleck hopes to drive a new model where actors, directors, and other contributors act as investors, sharing the work, the risks, and the rewards of a project’s outcome.
Reconsidering the “Fairness” of Hollywood Payment Schemes
Hollywood’s traditional model often relies on convoluted financial arrangements. Creatives are typically offered upfront fees with “net profits” tied to a project’s financial performance. However, a web of hidden fees and deductions often means that talent rarely sees any additional payout. This setup has created a long-standing frustration among actors, writers, and directors who feel their contributions aren’t valued fairly.
Affleck’s vision with Artists Equity seeks to challenge this system by aligning creators’ incentives with those of financiers. He believes that involving artists and investors can help to create a healthier collaboration, as everyone shares in the stakes. Affleck emphasizes the “fairness” of this new vision, saying, “That’s a basic fundamental principle that Matt and I are really drawn to, to create a fair deal for everybody that they can live within success, in failure, or anywhere along the spectrum.”
A Lack of Job Security Affects Everyone
Affleck also has his eyes on the quick turnaround expectations of streaming platforms, the looming risk of “cancellation” that can abruptly end careers, and the fickle manner by which films and shows can be shuttered without warning. “I don’t know when this might go away,” Affleck says of the ephemeral nature of jobs in show business. “I’m one errant remark away from being canceled, or I’m one movie bomb away from never working again, and I’ve got a family and so forth. Naturally, people seek to do what’s in their best interest.”
In a recent interview, Affleck expanded on the lack of job security in Hollywood and combined this pressure with the uncertainty of payment that comes with the “net profit” model. To many in Hollywood, continued pay isn’t reliable, and there’s no guarantee of other jobs in the future.
“We’re all subject to this sort of insecurity in this business. Whether we’re actors or directors or writers, the phone could stop ringing for us,” he says, “The people invested in the movie are not aligned exactly with the people who are doing it. And it’s not because they’re trying to just be extractive, it’s because they’ve learned, well, this is the only thing I can count on, this upfront money.”
A Star’s-Eye View of Hollywood Profits
Reflecting on his career, Affleck shared that he, too, has taken on projects primarily for financial reasons. He used his role in Gigli, the 2003 box-office failure, as an example of the industry’s pitfalls. Although Affleck received a substantial paycheck, the film’s underperformance left him reconsidering the imbalance in Hollywood’s risk and reward system. “I got a big cash payday for that,” he says. “Well, it doesn’t feel right in retrospect because they lost money.” He believes that the new system put forth by Artists Equity can help to alleviate the disconnect between creative contributors and those financing the projects.
These and other pressures contributed to significant strikes by writers and actors demanding fair compensation and rights, demands which have been sharpened by the shift toward digital mediums. Some of the demands made by the most recent round of actors’ and writers’ strikes were transparency and equity in revenue-sharing. In many ways, the strikers share a similar vision to Affleck and Damon, that of a changed Hollywood that treats creatives as valued partners at every step of the process.
