“It’s an old Disney scam where they slightly rename a series to reset contract terms back to first season,” DeKnight wrote on X/Twitter. “Needs to be addressed by all the guilds/unions and crushed!”
“It’s an old Disney scam where they slightly rename a series to reset contract terms back to first season,” DeKnight wrote on X/Twitter. “Needs to be addressed by all the guilds/unions and crushed!”
While I am not a fan of the historic tendency for Disney (and I think also Nickelodean?) to use soft reboots and spinoff shows to keep shows in certain budgetary brackets:
That is a horrible idea. Tying contracts to continuity is just a giant mess that actively discourages even stuff like The Good Place/Parks and Rec/Brooklyn 99 where there are vague references to each show in a way that you can kind of pretend they are all the same universe. Instead, it means that studios would be even less likely to work with a popular show runner for fear of triggering “continuity”
In theory: The current model “works”. I would hope Charlie Cox was able to negotiate a strong paycheck for himself. Same with Dinofrio. Because they were almost universally praised for Netflix Daredevil and it doesn’t really matter if this is Earth-616 or Earth -617. If your show was successful then you are in a very good position to negotiate for the sequel series (… and that is how you get a spinoff with the little brother somehow becoming President because the lead actress wanted too much money)
In reality? Daredevil Season 1 was largely praised and like the first two thirds of Season 2 were almost universally praised. The last third of Season 2 was a shitshow that was setting up the tie-in show, which was god awful, and Season 3 (?) was a mess from top to bottom. Maybe you can blame a lot of that on the show runners (we sure as hell won’t blame the execs…), but it greatly “devalues” the performers. Which… is arguably by design. Same with Deborah Ann Woll who, weird “I guess I’ll just strip so we can get some naked upper back in the series premier” aside, consistently became the heart and soul of TWO of the Netflix shows and more or less redeemed one of the top 100 most problematic characters in Marvel history. And Idle Hands kid wasn’t completely horrible.
And… I honestly don’t know how to handle that. Just because someone was hired in season 1 doesn’t mean they need the biggest paycheck on the crew. Just like someone who showed up two seasons ago but became THE standout star doesn’t deserve to get paid shit. The hope would be for more Friends like collective bargaining but… sometimes you have stuff like Mythbusters where Adam and Jaime were very much “work friends” or stuff like Castle where Stana Katic and Nathan FIllion will be the chief suspect if the other ends up dead.
Similarly: Sometimes a soft reboot is good. Look at all the people who will INSIST you need to watch Supernatural from episode 1 even though we all acknowledge Season 1 is nothing like the rest of the series and the show itself more or less completely changed premises and genres three or four times.
But… those are also what are historically used to break the bargaining power of a “show”.
Don’t you think this show will be a little more than a vague reference or a quick cameo? I think you’re making a really disingenuous argument here.
And those cameos or shared-universe things should be negotiated anyway and probably are. It actually is also somewhat helpful for the show to share the universe with another popular show, otherwise they wouldn’t do that. But this isn’t that. This is them going “you liked Netflix’s Daredevil, so here, enjoy”. That’s their selling point. It’s not from the makers of Daredevil, it’s the same Daredevil.
Here is a tip: If you want to have a conversation with someone, don’t open up with calling them a liar because clearly anything that is not your world view must be a lie. It is a toxic mindset to begin with and just makes people not want to deal with you.
Also, I have no idea how any of that applies to what I said above. While I assume he got a decent paycheck, I am pretty sure Ted Danson wasn’t paid as though he had been on Frasier for 11 seasons when he did his cameos as Sam.
Thanks for the tip! Agree to disagree about everything but I still I think your framing wasn’t fair compared to the show in question. Have a nice day.