Thread by @xoxoGG

Last week an agent and I had a conversation about the packaging fee dispute. As a manager, my job is very similar to an agent’s — I do what they do (minus negotiation) as well as act as a creative partner and sometimes-therapist. Like an agent, I’m compensated with 10% of my...

...client’s earnings. I told this agent that I had a hard time understanding how they justified taking packaging fees for what was, from where I stood, their baseline job. The standard terms of these fees take money out of a show’s budget and back end profits, which often...

...results in agencies making more money off of a client’s ideas than the client’s themselves. In many of my clients’ development deals, which were negotiated by their agents, the terms of the clients’ back end participation are lower than what their agencies stand to collect...

...if they received packaging fees on any of them (and I can’t imagine none of them have, not that anyone has told me or the clients one way or another). The agent’s counter argument was that in today’s landscape individual agencies aren’t getting full packages anymore because...

...they’re having to share that cut of the back end with other agencies, earning less than they used to. The agent referenced a recent situation where their agency had to change the terms of what had been a full package and give a quarter of their back end participation away...

...to a rival agency when attaching one of their directors. I asked what the other agency had done to deserve a cut of the back end and was told, “well, they represent that director.”

That’s it. That’s the whole argument. In their minds, simply representing someone is enough.

Having packaging fees is so de rigueur that simply performing the basic functions of their jobs is seen as grounds for more than their straight commission. When I asked this agent why they didn’t just say no to the other agency’s demand for part of the package, I was told that...

...they wouldn’t have gotten this director otherwise.

If someone would like to explain to me how that’s not racketeering, I’m all ears.

Something else to read - and from four years ago (!!!):
hollywoodreporter.com/news/gavin-pol…

NOTE: as a manager I am able to potentially earn more than my 10% commission if I am a producer on a client’s project. Many managers treat being a producer as a given, even when their contributions to a project fall within the confines of their jobs as representatives. That’s...

...just as problematic as agents collecting packaging fees, and if any writer is asked by their manager to let them produce something but said manager isn’t doing anything that goes above and beyond their job as your representative: say no.