Star Wars, Alien, etc. novelization dispute

[Ryujin]

I don't mean this as a lean/fat year thing. Just in general - putting off liabilities for as log as possible is a common enough tactic. And it doesn't have to be a top-level strategy. Whatever divisions these royalties fall into make be putting things off to make their specific numbers look better. Maybe it'll coem due, maybe it won't.

And maybe, just maybe they can put it off for long enough that it's not found out until the managers in question have already moved on.

... unless someone at HoM reads the news.

 

[Umbran]

And maybe, just maybe they can put it off for long enough that it's not found out until the managers in question have already moved on.

... unless someone at HoM reads the news.

Well, as has been noted, this looks crummy, but...nobody's going to boycott Disney over it, so hardly a real issue to the bottom line. I don't know that the House of Mouse actually cares.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well anyone paying attention to Disney should know they're not a nice corporation and haven't been since basically forever.

Their labour practices alone fall on the exploitive side of things.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Sure they make nice things, but yes, they are run by the ferengi. I mean, they could probably teach Microsoft, Apple, and RIAA a thing or two...

 

[GreyLord]

Remembered this thread after seeing an article on further developments of this.

It's not just Alan Dean Foster, other authors have jumped into the boat on this including

Donald Glut, a writer who novelized 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back,” and James Kahn, who adapted the third film of the original trilogy, “Return of the Jedi,” both have said they are missing royalty checks, too.

If a resolution isn’t reached, the writers association could take further action, said Ms. Kowal, including putting Disney on a list of publishers it tells its members to avoid. The term given to such a designation: “Writer Beware.”

Star Wars Novelists Seek Years of Missing Royalty Payments From Disney

Authors of books tied to big film franchises such as Star Wars stopped receiving checks after Disney acquired Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox.

www.wsj.com

 

[Deset Gled]

Remembered this thread after seeing an article on further developments of this.

It's not just Alan Dean Foster, other authors have jumped into the boat on this including

Cases like this are the ones that remind me of why all the artists guilds (actors, writers, whatever) are so important. No individual has the power to threaten Disney in these cases.

 

[Morrus]

Cases like this are the ones that remind me of why all the artists guilds (actors, writers, whatever) are so important. No individual has the power to threaten Disney in these cases.

Sadly, probably neither does any union. Disney is an international megacorporation. Even governments struggle to handle companies of that size.

 

[Deset Gled]

Sadly, probably neither does any union. Disney is an international megacorporation. Even governments struggle to handle companies of that size.

The Writer's Guild strike in 2007-2008 was pretty effective at moving mountains bigger than Disney. And while Disney as a whole is doing good, a lot of divisions (the movies and parks, mostly) are struggling. Having a threat of boycott/strike from all the writings teams on the news shows they just announced would put them in a precarious situation.

I'm not saying it would be easy or that it's likely to happen. But I do think it's possible. And that gives me hope.

 

[Morrus]

The Writer's Guild strike in 2007-2008 was pretty effective at moving mountains bigger than Disney. And while Disney as a whole is doing good, a lot of divisions (the movies and parks, mostly) are struggling. Having a threat of boycott/strike from all the writings teams on the news shows they just announced would put them in a precarious situation.

I'm not saying it would be easy or that it's likely to happen. But I do think it's possible. And that gives me hope.

Genuine question - what stops them just hiring writers not in America?

 

[Istbor]

Genuine question - what stops them just hiring writers not in America?

Zero. Unless they have some sort of contracts that might prevent it, but that doesn't sound like a megacorp to me.