What is the nature of the licensing agreements between theaters and distributors? Is it like a contract? What are or could be the penalties for reneging on the agreement?
I don’t think anybody can argue that a theater owner can’t decide to not show any movie he decides he doesn’t wish to screen. But might it be considered unethical to make a licensing agreement and then “violate” it? Or is that something commonly done and no big deal?
Dopers who sympathize with the theater owner will try to keep this debate focused on his “right” to show whatever movie he wants. That legal right is not in question, and is not the point. Can we like keep a count of how many times during this discussion someone retreats to that position, and consider the whole thing godwinned after, say, five? Otherwise, I predict this will debate will become an endless series of “he has every right”/“I never said he didn’t” exchanges.
Isn’t this thread specifically about the contract issues involved, rather than the merits of Brokeback Mountain? I’m a little curious about what remedies the distributer could (or would bother to) seek. The theatre owner could argue that the film would do relatively little business. I can imagine a survey taken of Brokeback Mountain’s revenues at other theatres in the area and a court ordering the owner to cough up a calculated amount based on what might have been generated had he let the film play for the contract’s mandated minimal time.
The owner doesn’t quite have a legal right not to show the film. He had a legal obligation to do so, based on his contract, and thus had to make a decision of the cost of following his contract vs. the cost of not following it.
Rereading, I guess you’re right. Since this was posted in Great Debates, I came into the thread with certain presumptions regarding what aspect of this situation would be discussed.
Isn’t the narrow scope of the OP more suitable to General Questions?
Why? The question asked in this thread is essentially about contract law as it relates to the business of film distribution. I’d be shocked if there weren’t hundreds of thousands or millions of people in North America capable of divorcing that issue from the content of the film that triggered the dispute.
I’ve tried researching film distribution contract law on the net, but most of it is about the distributor’s obligations, not the exhibitor’s. Surely a case like this isn’t unprecendented.
I don’t have any insight into the contractual relationship between film distrubutors and theatre owners, but I’d guess that the theatre has to pay whether or not they screen the film.
These “protests” always backfire, as they only serve to get more publicity for the film and make the protesters look like kooks to the general public.
“Pay” what? As I understand it (from a piece on All Things Considered a while back), the core of the distributor-exhibitor agreement is that the distributor gets most of the box office receipts. (That’s why the popcorn and soda cost so much – it’s the only way for the theater to make any money. From the owner’s POV, the theater is a concession stand with screening-rooms incidentally attached.) So if the movie is not shown at all . . .
as someone else noted above, there is a fairly straightforward measure of damages available, viz. the gate in the geographically proximate theatres that
did screen, perhaps with some modifications on the upside since any lost opportunity for promotion, etc. will be carried to the theatre owner’s debit column.
What you don’t get in contract damages, however, is satisfaction–ie, there is no real slap upside the head for the asshole who makes this decision. All he pays is what the distributor has lost–nothing extra for being a shithead.
Calling him an asshole or shithead in the process, though, invites a countersuit for libel if the theatre owner can demonstrate that refusing to exhibit the film was a business rather than personal decision. It being Utah, he might be able to make such an argument.
What? I’m pretty sure this is incorrect: you can’t make a case for libel when someone is calling you a naughty name. If you call him a dealbreaker, a liar, or a puppy-strangler, he might have a case for libel; but not if you call him a shithead. (If you’re speaking broadly and metaphorically, pardon my misunderstanding!)
Maybe, but I don’t think it’s the libel line. As I understnad, to win a libel case, you have to prove that, among other things, the defendant’s claims were false. How does one prove that one is not a bigot? It’s not falsifiable.
If the studio says, “They didn’t show this movie because their Mormon masters told them not to,” then you might be talking slander. That’s falsifiable. But a charge of bigotry is not.
No. Punitive damages are not available in contract actions.
As for the issue of damages, I haven’t seen the contract, but I wouldn’t be surprised if such licensing agreements have a liquidated damages clause - the parties agree at the time of making the contract that if a party reneges, the other party will be damaged in the amount of $___________.
Such clauses are proper where it would be difficult to determine at the time of the making of the contract how much damage a party would suffer by a breach. IMO, a movie licensing agreement would be a prime candidate for such a clause, as it is pretty hard to tell ahead of time which movie would be a hit and which would be a bomb.