One of the biggest issues writers and actors have – and a huge driving force behind the continuing strikes – is the lack of fair remuneration when it comes to streaming residuals. If a series racks up billions of minutes every week, then you’d expect the creatives to be compensated fairly, but that hasn’t been the case with Suits.
Even though the nine-season legal drama has been shattering records for weeks on end on the Nielsen charts, more than one former writer has come forward and revealed the paltry residuals they’ve been receiving. While creator Aaron Korsh will earn significantly more than the staffers due to his status as creator of the show, he hinted to The Hollywood Reporter that he’s not seeing as much as you might think from its incredible resurgence over the last month.
“I believe Suits is an example of the gains of the 2007 strike in terms of residuals and not an example of the shortcomings of where we are now. And the reason I think that is because, first of all, an episode of Suits is worth approximately $70,000 in residuals so far, as best as I can figure out, and that number is nowhere near, in my estimation, finished growing. As opposed to if Suits were written for Netflix, and then I think the number would be under $10,000 and would probably never grow much above that.
So, I’m 1000 percent supportive of my guild; there needs to be an overhaul to the way writers are compensated because residuals are vanishing when you make shows for streamers. I am a profit participant in the show, and I don’t think anybody needs to lose one second of sleep over how much money I’m making from Suits.”
Korsh won’t exactly be living on the breadline, then, but it also sounds as if even being the mastermind behind the single biggest show on all of streaming doesn’t bring the financial benefits you may expect, something that needs to change right from the very top, so long as it trickles all the way down to the bottom, too.