Is it money that SAG-AFTRA and the other unions receive, but not the money that the members of those unions receive?
Given how much studios pay for big name actors, I would guess the reason they listed those slices by the name of the union is because that’s what the unions themselves get, not what gets paid to union members. That’s the only way it makes any sense at all, unless they’re limiting the chart to only the most absurdly successful movies rather than what’s more typical.
The most absurdly successful movies still have big-name actors making tens of millions.
My guess is that the labels are for the minimums that SAG-AFTRA and the other unions negotiated. So when Tom Cruise is paid $100m in a movie that costs $500m to make, but earns $600m in revenue, they list it as “SAG-AFTRA: $10k” or whatever, because that’s the minimum they could have paid Cruise based on the SAG-AFTRA deal.
In a sense, that’s fair enough. My understanding of the way the Hollywood pay scales work is that the unions set minimums, but the actors (and screen writers, and directors, etc.) are free to negotiate for more. The reality is that the deals that the Hollywood unions are negotiating are really pretty minimal for most projects there. I’d assume that the main reason that the entertainment companies are pushing back is that they know that people are willing to do almost anything to work in Hollywood, and they’d do it for free if they could. So, it galls the entertainment companies that they’re losing profits by having to agree to treat their employees as valuable humans and pay them living wages instead of just treating them as unpaid interns and pocketing those minor profits.
Given how much studios pay for big name actors, I would guess the reason they listed those slices by the name of the union is because that’s what the unions themselves get, not what gets paid to union members. That’s the only way it makes any sense at all, unless they’re limiting the chart to only the most absurdly successful movies rather than what’s more typical.
The most absurdly successful movies still have big-name actors making tens of millions.
My guess is that the labels are for the minimums that SAG-AFTRA and the other unions negotiated. So when Tom Cruise is paid $100m in a movie that costs $500m to make, but earns $600m in revenue, they list it as “SAG-AFTRA: $10k” or whatever, because that’s the minimum they could have paid Cruise based on the SAG-AFTRA deal.
In a sense, that’s fair enough. My understanding of the way the Hollywood pay scales work is that the unions set minimums, but the actors (and screen writers, and directors, etc.) are free to negotiate for more. The reality is that the deals that the Hollywood unions are negotiating are really pretty minimal for most projects there. I’d assume that the main reason that the entertainment companies are pushing back is that they know that people are willing to do almost anything to work in Hollywood, and they’d do it for free if they could. So, it galls the entertainment companies that they’re losing profits by having to agree to treat their employees as valuable humans and pay them living wages instead of just treating them as unpaid interns and pocketing those minor profits.