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Anika Decker and Til Schweiger at the Bavarian Film Prize 2009: Who is entitled to a lot of the profit?
Photo: Tobias Hase / picture-alliance / dpa
For screenwriters, whining is part of the craft.
Sometimes they complain that their stories are not sold.
Then in turn they accuse the producers and directors of messing up their ideas.
When a film they have written becomes a success, they want more of the profit.
But with all the moaning that is often annoying, they are sometimes even right.
The screenwriter, director and writer Anika Decker is suing Til Schweiger's company Barefoot Films and Warner Bros. Entertainment GmbH because she is of the opinion that she still has shares in the income from the comedies "Keinohrhasen" (2007) and "Zweiohrküken" (2009 ) are due.
Decker and Schweiger wrote the scripts for the two movie hits, which together had well over ten million viewers in Germany alone.
For her work on "Keinohrhasen" Decker received, as she told the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" a few weeks ago, allegedly 50,000 euros.
The box office profit of the film was around 70 million euros, according to the complaint;
if you add the later DVD revenues and sales of TV rights, you end up in the three-digit million range.
Since 50,000 euros actually seem a bit miserable.
Decker's lawsuit was promoted by the amendment to copyright law in 2002, which had the aim of strengthening the contractual position of creative people.
Paragraph 32a, also known as the “fairness paragraph”, grants them the right to additional remuneration in the event that the fee originally paid is “noticeably disproportionate” to the income.
In Hollywood, too, studios like to calculate small revenues
Decker's lawyer is Nikolaus Reber from Munich, who has represented the cameraman Jost Vacano in a legal dispute against the production company Bavaria Film GmbH in a long-standing procedure and finally fought for additional compensation.
Vacano was awarded a multiple of the salary which he had received for his work on the war epic "Das Boot" (1981)
(Read
here
more about the case).
more on the subject
Dispute over "no ears": screenwriter Decker wins in the first instance against Til Schweiger
Today, Decker and Reber won a stage win in the Berlin district court: They are allowed to view the documents and accounts, which show how much the two films took in their various evaluations.
A transparency that hardly any creative in the film industry is granted.
In Hollywood, too, studios and producers like to count their income down so as not to have to pay out even contractually guaranteed profit shares.
It's about adequacy and fairness
There is a fundamental problem of justice in the film business.
When it is successful, a large part of the cake does not go to the creative minds, but to the studios, the lenders, the financiers, who were often far from the creative process and may not have contributed a single idea.
But they raised the money, mostly a lot of money, and without that nothing works in film.
A screenwriter who has a problem with the fact that he gets much less of the profit than a producer should rather write novels that he can publish himself in today's digital world without great expense.
A producer usually has to compensate three or four flops with a hit.
If a film doesn't work, it doesn't ask its screenwriter for money back.
But in Decker's case, as before with Vacano, it is about appropriateness and fairness.
Yes, of course Schweiger gave the largely unknown Decker a huge chance at "Keinohrhasen" and opened up the chance for a great career.
But it can hardly be denied that the film has an originality and a wit that was previously unknown from Schweiger films.
Probably not least because of Decker's credit.
Nora Tschirner in the hit movie "Keinohrhasen" (2007): An originality and a joke that was previously unknown from Schweiger films
Photo: A3322 Warner Bros. / dpa
Who has what part in the scripts of "Keinohrhasen" and "Zweiohrküken" can be clarified by comparing the different versions of the script - a common practice in Hollywood.
But there can be no doubt that creatives - regardless of whether they are writing scripts, directing the camera or making music - must be involved in the success of a film if they have made a significant contribution to it.
And that the producers and distributors must be accountable to them for the income.
Incidentally, it would be good for the entire industry if it were taken for granted that at the moment of triumph one is fair - and ready to share the success.
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