Whoa - did you know that writers of animated films get absolutely nothing when it comes to their films being sold to TV, video, and DVD? The LA Times enlightens us...
"Writers of live-action features get royalties when their work is repackaged and sold. But writers of animation don't. Their 'ancillary profit participation,' as it's known, is paid in multiples of zero."
That seems a bit criminal when you consider that 3 of the top 7 box office films of the year so far are animated movies (Cars, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Over the Hedge).
Though they claim not to have ditched animation, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, whose credits include Aladdin and The Road to El Dorado, haven't written an animation screenplay since Shrek, in 2001, for which they earned an Oscar nomination. And who can blame them? Their script for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which has just broken into the top 10-grossing films of all time, is likely to net them each at least an extra $1 million when the film explodes onto the video market. That money never would have materialized if they had written, say, Shrek the Third instead.
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