Pay-or-Play
From ForcaWiki, the simple encyclopedia
| In one sentence | A contract rule guaranteeing that an actor, writer, or director gets paid their full fee even if the movie ends up not using them. |
|---|---|
| Category | Film and Television |
| Related | Talent, Attached |
Imagine you are hired and promised a full day's pay to help set up a school fair, but then it rains and the fair gets cancelled. A pay-or-play style promise would mean you still get paid in full, even though you never actually got to do the job.
A pay-or-play provision works the same way for Talent in the movie business. It guarantees that if an actor, writer, or director is not used in a film for any reason at all, they still get paid their full agreed compensation.
Fun facts
- Pay-or-play deals protect talent from all the ways a movie can fall apart or change, like a script rewrite that cuts their role entirely, or the whole project collapsing.
- Because pay-or-play guarantees full payment no matter what, it can be an expensive promise for a studio to make, especially to a very highly paid star.
- A pay-or-play deal is one reason a studio might keep paying an actor even after replacing them or cancelling the project they were hired for.