Did you know that if you just slightly rename a show, it’s still considered a totally new show, and the production company gets to renegotiate contracts? Usually crew members who are with IATSE get full benefits, including vacation, after a show hits its third season. Disney is particularly good at this—and previous reports have seen stars explain that Disney shows got away with paying 88% of the standard rate for the first three season.
And now the company is doing it with Daredevil. The Disney+ show is using the exact same characters, with the same backstory, and even the same actors as the Netflix show. Daredevil: Born Again might be a wink to the origins of these particular on-screen characters, or it might be a way for Disney to avoid paying royalties to the creators of the original show.
Netflix showrunner Steven DeKnight condemned the practice on X, calling on “all the unions/guilds,” presumably meaning SAG-AFTRA, WGA, and IATSE, to ensure protections against this behaviour in the future.
Disney’s done it before: The Suite Life of Zack & Cody became The Suite Life on Deck in its fourth season. Hannah Montana got a reboot with Hannah Montana Forever. Now, we’re even getting The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder—a season four reboot, 15 years after The Proud Family went off the air. As DeKnight says, at this point it’s a clear trend that Disney seems prone to reboot shows, and in the process, reset the contracts back to “season one” rates.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, the media being covered here wouldn’t exist.
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