Death of TV's Overall Deals (As We Knew Them)
Apple visits agents and lawyers to remake deals, Amazon's new 'back-end' and what dealmakers reveal to me about the new reality
“Ava DuVernay Signs Massive Overall Deal With Warner Bros. TV”
“Ryan Murphy Leaves 20th TV for Netflix Mega-Deal”
“Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix Deal Ups the Stakes in Hollywood’s Battle for Ownership”
These kinds of delicious headlines inevitably inspired additional ones about how others might get in on the zeitgeisty cash grab. “What are Overall Deals and How Do You Get Them?” “Overall Deals . . . Explained!” “TV Pacts: Who’s Scored Overall Deals at Studios, Networks” and maybe the greatest headline of a moment: “Showrunners Testing Waters With Multiple TV Overall Deals.”
Those stories and explainers captured the TV business in the late 2010s, with streamers writing enormous checks to attract talent. Creators could choose between sticking with legacy studios or taking a risk with one of the new guys in exchange for a mountain of cash. Many chose the latter.
Today, the idea of a “nine-figure overall” deal feels about as real as a 2020 meme stock. “Across town people are wiping out their slates and their overalls and hitting restart,” says one top talent lawyer.
Now, studios and streamers alike are tightening their belts with the most obvious sign being the absence of those rich eight- and nine-figure overall deals.
“They’re all ending because they were crazy,” says the lawyer. “Those deals were briefly perceived as an asset. ‘We have locked up the top talent in town, and we spent a lot of money, but we’ve built this incredible roster!’”
The appeal was part optics — “the perception of being in the [streaming] business even though you don’t have the subscribers,” continues the lawyer — but the problem soon became clear: Mega-pacts generally don’t show a dependable profit. “To have a really expensive overall on the books is a liability. Those are almost always underwater in terms of economics. They look terrible on the balance sheet.”
Let’s be clear: Overalls are not all ending. They’re just not being passed out like swag in an Oprah’s Favorite Things episode anymore. So far this year, new or renewed overalls announced include: Pachinko creator Soo Hugh (Apple), True Detective: Night Country’s Issa López (HBO), Big City Greens’ Chris Houghton and Shane Houghton (Disney), Abbott Elementary showrunners Justin Halpern and Patrick Schumacker (WBTV), The Spiderwick Chronicles creator Aron Eli Coleite (Paramount), The Rings of Power duo Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne (Amazon MGM), The Hijacking of Flight 601 team Camilo Prince and Pablo González (Netflix), Power Book IV: Force’s Gary Lennon (Lionsgate) and prolific creator Darren Star (Universal TV).
As frustrating as such phrases as “right-size” and “market correction” are, that’s how most people I’ve talked to see the situation. That said, not everyone is gloomy. “The number of [overall deals] has gone down somewhat and it’s a tighter market, for sure, but there are still pockets of really great deals,” says one of the more optimistic talent attorneys. “There have definitely been positives. Certain people are absolutely getting bigger deals than they previously had.”
Whether or not overalls are going extinct seems to depend on whom you talk to — and probably also how their week has gone — even among veteran lawyers working with the upper echelon of talent. Over the last couple of weeks, I spoke with lawyers, agents and studio sources about the new era of dealmaking, all of them on background, so they could be candid about what’s really happening in the room without tipping their hand or spooking clients.
In this issue, you’ll learn:
Why “potential” alone isn’t enough to land a deal anymore
The death of the development-related overall
Why it’s (again) the middle class of writers feeling the squeeze
Why Amazon’s “new” stance on rewarding success is making lawyers laugh
About Apple’s roadshow talking to talent reps to revise its deal structure
The move to first looks and why they actually might be better
The potential return of the back-end and why dealmakers like it
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