Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s conditions for workers on the ‘The Rip’: “You have to have compensation that works for people”

The Hollywood business model has been undergoing dramatic changes over the past several years as the behaviors of consumers shift and streaming services play an ever-greater role in the industry. In light of that, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon want to “maintain the integrity of it and to provide the decent middle-class wage that it’s provided for decades.”

In order to do so, they negotiated a first-of-its-kind compensation deal with Netflix that will provide back-end bonuses to all 1,200 people that worked on their upcoming film ‘The Rip’. “Every single person who worked on it should benefit from it,” said Damon to which Affleck said, “Absolutely.”

Affleck and Damon bring fairness compensation model to Netflix

Typically, Netflix pays cast and crew a flat, upfront fee for their labor when participating in projects for its streaming platform. This is a break from the traditional model, which in addition to the agreed upon upfront salary, studios offer residuals and back-end bonuses based on how well a production performs.

However, Affleck and Damon, through their production company, Artists Equity, struck a deal with Netflix in which everyone that participated in the creation of ‘The Rip’ will get a piece of the pie if it succeeds on the platform.

“The most self-serving aspect of it is, in our experience, every single person that works on this movie, it’s the most collaborative of all art forms, everybody is vital to it, and we want to extend and unite everybody to be part of it,” explained Affleck to Variety on at ‘The Rip’ worldwide premiere in New York on Tuesday night.

“There’s no guarantee, that you know, everything’s going to, you know, you’re going to get rich and be successful. But if you work on a project and you are successful, you ought to benefit in that,” he added. “You gotta have compensation that works for people.”

Affleck thinks this model will lead to better productions. He figures that the idea of future profits is a lot more motivating than a rousing speech on set.

How will Affleck’s and Damon’s special compensation deal work?

Affleck explained some of the details of the model negotiated with Netflix to The New York Times. None of the cast or crew members received the upfront bonus according to the actor. All 1,200 will receive a back-end bonus based on metrics that have been defined, although Affleck didn’t divulge those.

The bonus payout will be determined by the movie’s performance on Netflix during 90 days and how it rates against other films on the streaming platform. A “grand slam” would be if it matched the success that ‘KPop Demon Hunters’, which garnered 325 million views by August. Were that to happen, it would put ‘The Rip’ and potential bonuses in the top tier.

However, Affleck told the paper that he doesn’t have his hopes that high. But he still called on viewers to give them a hand to show that the new model for Netflix can work telling Variety, “I think everybody at Variety should just leave the movie on loop, and you know, see what happens.”

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