Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 1997 The Net Profits Puzzle Victor P. Goldberg Columbia Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Business Organizations Law Commons Recommended Citation Victor P. Goldberg, The Net Profits Puzzle, 97 COLUM. L. REV. 524 (1997). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/681 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Archive. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ESSAY THE NET PROFITS PUZZLE Victor P. Goldberg* The use of "net profits" clauses in the movie business poses a problem. The standardperception is that Hollywood accountingresults in successful films showing no net profits. If that is indeed so, then why have they survivedfor over four decades? This Essay argues that a successful movie will fail to yield net profits only if a "grossparticipant" (a major star whose compensa- tion is in part afunction of the film's gross receipts) becomes associated with the film. Since the net profits participants typically are associated with a project first, the question becomes: Why would they be willing to sacrifice some (or all) of their contingent compensation when a gross participant is added to the project? The answer is that the net participantsare made better off, ex ante, both directly by increasing their expected earnings, and indi- rectly because the studio is willing to payfor the increasedflexibility.