Topline:
There’s a growing trend of high-profile actors and creators securing first-look deals with studios, giving them the initial opportunity to consider new material from talent. These relationships have in some ways replaced the vogue for “overall” deals that dominated the earlier streaming era.
Why it matters: First-look deals suit the current, more austerity-minded era, a lower-risk investment in talent with still potentially meaningful upside. But the lawyers who make these deals on behalf of their clients believe they have both positive and negative aspects.
Positivity first: First-look deals give talent more flexibility than an overall one. They can carve out exceptions, and they can shop a project elsewhere if the studio passes. These pacts can net in the low seven figures annually, and then if a project gets made, there’s the nice surprise of more.
A concerning look: The critique of these deals is that they still present some “handcuffs” on talent, and there’s concern that when a studio passes, it emits a negative signal to the market. But most concerning of all is that first-look deals represent another way for the rich to get richer, that they’re a backdoor way for studios to reward people they want to work with without it showing up in the budget of a particular project. In this way they’re symbolic of the continued erosion of the middle class in Hollywood.
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This story is published in partnership with The Ankler, a paid subscription publication about the entertainment industry.