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EXCLUSIVE: It has only been six months since Producers United launched an appeal to its content-making bosses to stop the systemic erosion facing career producers – those who lead productions, sign the budgets, and whose livings come solely from fees on the projects they produce. The upstart group has secured commitments to reform their policies from the film sides of Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, Paramount and Universal, and the pay TV network HBO.
The specific reforms will differ slightly because each studio’s embrace was done separately. Bottom line: In a remarkably short amount of time, dramatic improvements have been realized in the areas of commencement wages and healthcare contributions for the career producers that studios count on to make the movies that lines their slates.
Producers United only began formally pitching content makers on reforms that were sorely overdo in April, after Deadline revealed their plans. At that time, 86 career producer members had signed on. Producers United now has a membership roster of 130 producers, so the group accounts for more than 90% of content generated by studios and streamers. The cooperative operates autonomously from the Producers Guild, which has made its own inroads into reforms along with policing credits during awards season. Neither is a bargaining collective, and so the reliance is on the persuasive powers of these producers to convey their hardships, but it cannot force labor stoppages as was the case with the guilds. The next step for Producers United will be to persuade the streaming services to take part, and take the next step in knocking on the doors of networks, studios and other TV content makers.
But at this moment, the leadership of Producers United are overjoyed by the reception from film studios and HBO, the latter of which becomes the first TV content maker to climb aboard.
“We applaud WBD, Disney, Paramount and Universal for taking a leadership role in recognizing the degradation issue for Career Producers and for stepping up to create landmark change,” said the membership of Producers United in a statement. “By revising the structure of development compensation for Career Producers and ensuring healthcare contributions, all Career Producers can focus on what they do best, which is delivering world-class entertainment that bears the logos of these forward-thinking studios.
“While we have long accepted many of the changing realities of our business, for too long the profession of Career Producer has been steadily eroded, and these issues have not been widely publicized or addressed with one voice. The members of Producers United are working shoulder-to-shoulder to reverse entrenched industry practices to strengthen the career of producing for the next generation of Career Producers and to prevent producing from becoming a fading career path,” said Producers United.
The new policies agreed to by the film studios above will apply to career producers whether they are members of Producers United or not, and the exact details of the new policies vary by company.
While applications differ, in broad strokes each of the companies has separately agreed to provide career producers with health insurance going forward by making contributions to the MPI Non-Affiliate Agreement for a set period prior to principal photography, during principal photography, and recommencing upon completion of dubbing and scoring and continuing for a period of weeks thereafter. Career producers can alternatively elect to receive an equivalent reimbursement for other health insurance policies that they require, maintain or prefer.
Just as importantly, each of the companies has separately agreed to provide career producers with varying “commencement wages” — advances tied to various development tiers such as completed writing steps and other progress markers over the course of development. The advances are in fixed amounts adding up to multiples of the customary development fee — an advance established in the early 1970s that provides $12,500 upfront and an additional $12,500 if a project is abandoned, a rate that has never been adjusted for inflation and is only sporadically paid.
Leaders of Producers United began making their case not that long after the settlement of a WGA strike the leaned into the preservation of writers rooms the guild argued is a hatchery where future showrunners learn the craft. Producers United’s appeal it not dissimilar. Career producers are often the catalysts for getting projects going in the first place. At best, producers sustain themselves on half of that one-time $25,000 development deal. This created hardship because the gestation period of film and TV development projects can stretch nine months or nine years, or longer. That small sum paid is applied against an eventual producer fee that doesn’t kick in until start of production.
Conditions have gotten worse, as the career producers often are the first ones asked to trim their fees when others loyal to actors, directors and other elements are leveraged into producer roles. People in those categories, which includes managers of talent, are not included in Producers United’s rosters, because they draw salaries from other sources of income.
Even though most every negotiation about money in Hollywood is contentious, the career producers found sympathetic ears. Part of it was that some running studios have made livings through producing, or likely will do that when they leave those jobs. But this was no charity mission. The Producers United members were also able to convince the studios this was just good business. Among the benefits: changing fee payment schedules that will be applied to a producer fee isn’t costing studios that much extra.
The reforms will also lessen the need for career producers to set up and have to manage many projects, meaning they can better lean into the ones they’ve set at the studios involved here. The only extra cost studios will incur is fees that get paid on projects that don’t make it to production. But that becomes no different than fees paid to writers and filmmakers on those failed projects. Those are considered the equivalent of R&D, commonly written off as the price of doing business. Because it hasn’t worked that way for producers, many veterans felt it would deter future producers because you might spend a decade laboring on a project that gets killed, and have nothing to show for it.
This has made the career producers feel like the equivalent of wildcatters who drill on spec and only get rich when they strike oil. Wildcatting in film and TV might have been worth that gamble years ago, when overall deals were more generous and producers who set up many projects could sustain themselves through all those development fees. Nowadays, producer fees have been increasingly capped. That has made the pot of gold elusive.
At least now, the career producers will see funds committed to their health care, though not for their support teams, which the producers will have to deal with themselves. Specifically, career producers will get insurance kicked in during eight weeks of pre-production, the span of production, and, at a minimum, eight weeks of post-production. They believe this will allow all career producers, particularly emerging ones, to establish a bank of hours that will provide the security of health insurance for the people (and their families) who are responsible for the health and safety of a film or television show and its crew.
