Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s new venture seeks to make streaming more equitable for artists across the industry
“This is the next act of my career for a long, long time,” Ben Affleck says of Artists Equity, the independent production company he and Damon are starting
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After decades of collaboration, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are getting back into business together—this time in the name of combatting streaming services’ rising prevalence and dwindling paychecks. Joining other stars who have raised grievances about the way streaming short-changes artists, Affleck and Damon announced Sunday that they’re starting a production company together.
The duo has already obtained a minimum of $100 million in financing for the company, Artists Equity, courtesy of the investment firm RedBird Capital Partners. Affleck and Damon also put forward some capital themselves, although exact numbers remain undisclosed.
Per The New York Times, Damon will produce exclusively for Artists Equity from now on and has also signed on to star in an undisclosed number of films from the studio. Affleck has also committed to working exclusively for Artists Equity. The duo hopes to incentivize top-notch actors and creatives to join the company by offering a large cut of profits and box-office bonuses on top of union-minimum wages.
“This is the next act of my career for a long, long time,” Affleck tells the Times’ Brooks Barnes in a new interview.
Affleck says that Artists Equity plans to release three projects next year, and eventually work its way up to a five-per-year goal. First on the list: Affleck and Damon’s still-untitled Prime Video film about Michael Jordan’s historic 1980s deal with Nike. Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, and Marlon Wayans are also set to star.
Further elucidating his and Damon’s mission with Artists Equity, Affleck explains that the proliferation of streamers (which feels near-exponential these days) has “really ended back-end participation” from creatives.
“This is partly an effort to try to recapture some of that value and share it in a way that’s more equitable,” Affleck says. “Not just writers and directors and stars. But also cinematographers, editors, costume designers and other crucial artists who, in my view, are very underpaid.”
He continues: “I know what kind of freedoms artists long for and how they can be empowered — treated like grown-ups.”
The format recalls the original United Artists, which was founded in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith with the same purpose of putting creative control back into creators’ hands. (UA has since gone the traditional studio route—Amazon now owns the company.)
In his own statement, Damon shares that Artists Equity will allow artisans to “take ownership of their creative power, providing a platform for both established and emerging filmmakers to streamline the development of their content.” Although “celebrities-becomes-studio-head” is a time-honored trope that doesn’t always end well, the model in Damon and Affleck’s minds definitely has some precedent for success; just look at Blumhouse.