Crafty Table: If Your $750,000 Movie Makes $500 Million, What Do You Owe the Crew?

The success of Obsession has reignited an old argument about indie-film compensation. But there’s a difference between generosity after a miracle and pretending everyone took the same risk before it happened.

There is probably no better problem for an independent filmmaker to have than discovering that the movie you made for roughly $750,000 has grossed more than $500 million worldwide.

That is essentially what happened with Curry Barker’s Obsession. The little horror movie became the biggest global hit in Focus Features history, and the success has understandably produced plenty of stories about what Barker and everyone involved did right. 

Then the movie’s art director, Sally Choi, started a very different conversation.

Choi publicly disclosed that she had been paid $300 per day and took home $6,741.36 after taxes for her work on the film. She also said she wore numerous hats beyond art director, received no mileage reimbursement and regretted not trying to flip the production union. Choi acknowledged something important in the same discussion: she knew the rate beforehand and agreed to it.

She also alleged that some people on the production worked as volunteers receiving only gas and mileage reimbursement, which she said wasn't always paid promptly. I wasn't there, so I'm not going to adjudicate individual working conditions on a movie I had nothing to do with, and I certainly don't know what conversations took place between the producers and every member of the crew.

But the larger argument is worth having because Obsession is an almost absurdly perfect test case.

If somebody works on a $750,000 movie for $300 a day and the movie eventually grosses $500 million, does the success retroactively make $300 a day unfair?

My answer is no.

The Movie That Made $500 Million Didn't Exist Yet

This is the part of the conversation about independent filmmaking that tends to get lost once everybody knows the ending.

The crew members on Obsession were not hired to work on a $500 million blockbuster. They were hired to work on an independently financed movie with a reported production budget of roughly $750,000 that could very easily have disappeared into the enormous pile of independent movies that never meaningfully recoup their investment.

Nobody knew what was going to happen.

The producers didn't know. Curry Barker didn't know. Focus didn't know when the movie was being made, because Focus didn't acquire it until after its Toronto premiere. The investors certainly didn't know when they put their capital at risk.

If everybody had known Obsession was going to gross $500 million, it wouldn't have cost $750,000 to make.

That's important because filmmaking has an unusual tendency to confuse labor and investment once a movie succeeds.

A crew member generally makes a relatively straightforward exchange. You provide your professional services for a negotiated amount of money, and barring a deferred arrangement, you get paid regardless of whether the movie eventually makes $500 million, $5,000 or nothing.

The investor makes a fundamentally different exchange. The investor puts money into the movie knowing that some or all of it may never come back.

The producer may spend years developing the project, assembling financing, attaching talent, solving problems and getting the movie made, frequently earning far less for that time than they would have earned doing something else. The writer and director may similarly have years of uncompensated or undercompensated work invested before the first crew member reports to set.

That doesn't make the crew less important. It means they didn't all make the same bet.

And risk has to mean something if independent filmmaking is going to function.

You Can't Renegotiate the Movie After You Know the Ending

Imagine the opposite outcome. An investor puts $750,000 into a movie. The art director gets paid $300 a day, the gaffer gets paid, the sound mixer gets paid and everybody goes home.

The movie doesn't sell.

Two years later, the investor has recovered $80,000.

Nobody calls the art director and says, “Unfortunately the film lost 90% of its investment, so we're going to need $6,000 of your salary back.” Nor should they.

The crew performed the agreed work and was paid the agreed compensation. The financial failure belongs to the people who assumed the financial risk.

That principle can't suddenly disappear when the movie succeeds.

If a crew member agreed to $300 a day, performed the job and received $300 a day, I don't believe that person becomes contractually or morally entitled to additional compensation because the movie later becomes a phenomenon.

Could the producer give them more? Absolutely.

In an extraordinary situation like Obsession, I probably would.

But I would call it what it is: a bonus. 

Generosity Is Different From Obligation

If I made a movie for $750,000 and it became a once-in-a-generation success, I would absolutely consider giving meaningful bonuses to people who worked incredibly hard for below-market rates to help me get there.

That's partly gratitude and partly good business.

The independent-film business is remarkably small. If somebody killed themselves helping me make Movie One and Movie One changed my career, I'd like that person to want to work with me on Movie Two.

But I would be very careful about turning that gesture into an expectation that extraordinary downstream success automatically creates retroactive participation.

Those are two completely different concepts.

A producer saying, “We did incredibly well and I want to share some of that with the people who helped us” is generosity. An industry saying, “Your film exceeded a certain threshold, therefore people who previously negotiated fixed compensation are now entitled to participate in the upside” fundamentally changes the risk allocation under which the movie was financed.

If we want to change that allocation, there is a perfectly legitimate way to do it.

Negotiate it before the movie succeeds.

Want the Upside? Ask for the Upside.

This is probably the most useful lesson for anyone working below the line.

If you're taking a substantially discounted rate because you believe in a tiny movie, ask whether the producer will give you something in exchange for that discount.

Maybe it's a defined bonus if the film reaches certain revenue thresholds. Maybe it's deferred compensation. Maybe it's participation in a clearly defined crew pool. Maybe it's an escalation tied to a sale, box office or producer receipts.

The important thing is that everybody understands the bargain when they make it.

If your normal rate is $600 a day and the production can only afford $300, there's nothing unreasonable about saying, “I'll take the $300, but if this movie sells for more than X, I'd like another $5,000.”

The producer can say yes. The producer can say no. You can decide whether you still want the job.

That's negotiation.

What I don't think works is accepting the guaranteed money, watching the people who accepted the financial risk hit the lottery, and then deciding afterward that you should have bought a lottery ticket too.

There Are Other Ways to Make the Deal

There are filmmakers experimenting with very different models, and Sing Sing is probably the most interesting recent example.

That production deliberately flattened traditional compensation. Cast and crew were paid the same daily rate, while participants also received an ownership interest tied to their contribution. The structure was designed from the beginning around shared sacrifice and shared upside rather than retroactively imposed after the movie succeeded.

I love that as an experiment, but I don't think it should be mandatory. Those two positions aren't contradictory.

If a filmmaker can convince a star, cinematographer, production designer, grip and PA to work under an egalitarian structure because everyone believes in the movie, terrific. If investors understand the waterfall and agree that a meaningful portion of the upside will go to the people making the film, even better.

But that model changes the financing equation from Day One. Everyone knows what they are giving up and what they might receive.

That's fundamentally different from rewriting the economics after you discover you made Obsession.

And Obsession itself now offers another fascinating example of why agreements matter. An executive producer on the film has sued over profit participation she alleges she is owed under an earlier agreement, while the defendants dispute that interpretation and maintain she has been compensated according to the agreement. Whatever the eventual legal outcome, the dispute is a useful reminder that once extraordinary money enters the equation, every sentence governing participation suddenly becomes extremely important. 

The Real Lesson Is Risk Versus Reward

Independent movies exist because people make irrational bets.

Someone writes a screenplay for free. Someone spends years trying to package it. Someone puts hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars at risk. Actors work below their quotes. Crew members take discounted rates. Friends lend locations. Somebody's uncle provides a truck.

Everybody contributes something.

But contribution and financial risk aren't automatically the same thing, and we shouldn't pretend they are simply because the movie eventually succeeds.

If you're hired for a paid gig, negotiate the best deal you can. If you believe you're accepting an unusually low rate for something with genuine upside, negotiate a bonus or participation before you sign.

If you're the producer and your tiny movie becomes a historic success, remember the people who helped you make it. A generous bonus can be both the decent thing to do and one of the smartest investments you make in the team that will help you build whatever comes next.

But generosity should remain generosity.

The extraordinary success of a movie shouldn't retroactively rewrite the deal everyone willingly made when failure was still the far more likely outcome.

That uncertainty isn't an unfortunate flaw in independent filmmaking. It's the reason the reward exists.