Get in, loser, we’re avoiding residual payments.
As we approach the third anniversary of Quibi’s untimely death, Paramount Pictures is dancing on its grave. Celebrating the annual meme holiday called Mean Girls Day on October 3, Paramount has cut its seminal teen comedy into 23 quick bites for TikTok. Perhaps stumbling upon a formula that works years after Jeffrey Katzenberg’s billion-dollar gambit to give people something to watch while they wait for coffee, the movie has racked up hundreds of thousands of “views.” Though, tellingly, the views drop off considerably after the third part. More confusingly, “Part 3” received about 25,000 more views than “Part 2,” so it doesn’t seem like anyone’s actually using this to watch the movie.
However, there is a downside to Paramount dumping one of its most popular comedies in an awkward format for free: The studio collects ad revenue, but the actors and writers, who collectively spent the last five months striking for better pay, receive bupkis. As others pointed out on Twitter, studios can allegedly circumvent residual payments by breaking up the movie into TikToks (formerly known as Quibis). “As the WGA strike comes to a close, studios find another way not to pay us for our work (and if you think people won’t watch the film this way, you’re obvs not on TikTok),” wrote It Follows producer Rebecca Green.
As Time notes, this is part of a promotional trend that’s been picking up steam lately. August saw the release of the Killing It pilot and the Love Island premiere on TikTok. WGA strike captain Caroline Renard responded to the tactic by asking, “Are we accounting for whole ass episodes of TV being uploaded on TikTok and Twitter in our contracts now?”
Meanwhile, the actors who also don’t benefit from these promotional shenanigans have been on strike for 81 days. Maybe when they get a fair contract like the writers, they, too, can reap the benefits of their hard work.
