Part 7/8:
Recent tensions escalate within the industry as financial backers find themselves at odds with studios. In a case leading to a lawsuit, TSG Entertainment accused 20th Century Fox and Disney of employing Hollywood accounting techniques that cheated them out of what they felt was their due share. They claimed their high investments in productions were met with misleading accounting, resulting in a loss of hundreds of millions in profits.
While this lawsuit represents a minor victory for transparency amongst backers, most settlements in Hollywood remain shrouded in secrecy, seldom revealing any definitive shifts in practices. The legality of such accounting remains ambiguous, leaving artists at the mercy of the studios’ fine print.