On Wed, 26 May 2010, SA wrote:
> My question is - why can't studios return to the system that reigned in
> the old days, where talent was engaged by long-term contract?
IIUC, that depended on several things:
1) Oligopoly: there was effectively nothing but the studios, and there were only a handful, so they could collude;
2) Vertical integration, where they controlled the theatres, which was the only means of distribution; and
3) High volume -- in order to repay the cost of full year contracts, you wanted to have them working all the time.
You haven't got any of those things now. If you make a star, he'll break his contract and jump ship. Distribution is something that is out of your control -- you have to convince distributors. And there will never be the high volume that there was in the pre-TV days. Which is why the rise of TV pretty much coincides with the death of the studio system. Conversely, I think you found studio system structures operating far more recently in India when movies still played a similar pre-TV world role.
Secondly, by reducing stars to their acting ability, you're leaving out the real thing you are paying for, which is their marketing value. If you save $20M to make a film no one is inclined to see or show, you'd have to spend that much again or more on advertising it and building up demand. In the modern global market, where often the majority of sales comes in non-English speaking and even non-literate markets, stars are in many ways the cheapest and most effective form of marketing. They are literally global icons.
Thirdly, in the real world, the SAG daily minimum is $1k per day. Assuming arguendo the contracts you want pass SAG guideline muster (and I strongly suspect they don't), I'm pretty sure it would involve paying the the SAG minimum for every working day of the year, so $250K minimum -- which is way more than you pay non stars now per movie. And if you didn't, you'd be boycotted by every union in the business, which would pretty much choke your venture in the cradle.
There's more, but I don't think it's worth going into the details because we'd both have to learn Hollywood accounting which is something almost nobody agrees on.
Michael