The Directors Guild of America and its associated pension fund have sued MGM for allegedly undercutting them in fees and pension payments in regard to a “sweetheart deal” with major streaming services.
In a June 26 filing obtained by Complex, it’s detailed that in 2008, MGM, along with Paramount, formerly Viacom, and Lionsgate entered into a television service deal for Epix. In 2017, MGM purchased the platform entirely, later renaming it MGM+ in 2023.
It’s alleged that soon after Epix’s creation, MGM began cutting distribution deals with them at artificially low rates for the studio’s content. MGM also allegedly used the company to sub-distribute their content to other streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+, and Amazon.
The DGA and its associated pension fund claims that as a result of this “sweetheart distribution license arrangement,” MGM ended up providing artificially low numbers when accounting for the money the movies and shows made. This is because the “substantial revenues” from the streaming and pay TV deals, they allege, were just not included in the total numbers the studio provided to the defendants.
This is a problem because 1.2% of the money made through both physical media and streaming is supposed to be divided up by the DGA: 1/3 of that money (0.4% of the total) to the pension fund, and 2/3 (0.8% of the total) to the director (and, in some cases, selected other people who worked on the film).
The DGA and its pension fund seek a proper accounting of funds from 2010 to the present, as well as damages.
