Thanks to writers and actors remaining on strike in the name of fair pay and compensation, the shady world of streaming residuals has been dragged to the forefront of the conversation, with Supernatural creator and The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke the latest high-profile creative to weigh in.
While the filmmaker is the first to admit that he isn’t exactly in danger of living on the breadline, it nonetheless remains somewhere between curious and egregious that despite running for 15 whole seasons on television and spawning a short-lived spin-off that was almost instantly axed, he’s not rolling in it, either.
Speaking to Deadline from the picket lines, Kripke made a point of nothing that while he’s doing just fine, there’s a lot of people out there in similar positions that aren’t.
“I’ll give a perfect example. The residuals I get are from its airing on TNT, which you know, it gets a couple hundred thousand views. The Netflix streaming of Supernatural is consistently in the Top 10 for billions of minutes streamed. Part of that is because there’s so many episodes, but still, if you just go by how many people are spending minutes watching that show, it blows away Squid Game and blows away things that are massive hits, and I’ve gotten a total of zero residuals for that.
No one should cry for me. I’m doing great. I’m not asking for any sympathy for that. I’m just pointing out the inequity. Then when you think of all the writers on my staff, who really could use that money, are in between jobs or something, that’s significant. The fact that [streamers] can just live in this sort of new media disruptor black box and not pay what other networks are paying doesn’t seem fair.”
It’s similar to the comments espoused by Suits creator Aaron Korsh, with several writers seeing pennies in spite of the fact the legal drama has been the most-watched show on all of streaming for six weeks and counting. If only there was a simple solution, like paying people what they deserve, for instance.