With success comes the question of fairness and sharing. Is it reasonable for the production team working on a low-budget passion project film, such as OBSESSION, to take home only their hourly wages, or should they profit from the surprising upside when it materializes? Someone is making a lot of money on the movie, including its writer and director, Curry Barker, and his studio partners at Universal’s Focus Features.
But the 26-year-old Barker was undoubtedly the creative force behind the story, and took substantial financial risks to make his movie on a $750,000 production cost. Eventually, Universal’s Focus Feature indie studio division and its production partner Blumhouse came in on the project to fund its distribution, allowing it to reach a wide audience.
This story from the New York Times digs into the frustrations that some of the wider cast and crew have, at not being able to benefit from the movie’s financial success, since the terms of their employment were fixed and modest. In some cases, profit-sharing arrangements are negotiated up front, even for low-budget projects. But these arrangements are inconsistent, in an industry with an oversupply of production workers for the number of new projects.
