Original Sex And The City columnist Candace Bushnell denounces “Ponzi scheme” of the show’s rights
Netflix is getting Sex And The City, but the woman who inspired the show won't see any money from it
Aux News Candace Bushnell
Netflix recently announced that it has made a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to get the streaming rights to Sex And The City, the latest step in WBD’s apparent campaign to inexplicably devalue its own Max streaming service, but the new agreement has a big-name detractor: Writer Candace Bushnell, whose original Sex And The City newspaper column inspired the HBO series (the “Carrie” of the original column was a pseudonym she created for herself so he could tell her and her friends’ stories semi-anonymously). Though she probably doesn’t really care where the show ends up, Bushnell is taking the new licensing deal as an excuse to remind everyone how poorly she’s been served by the entertainment industry.
Bushnell told The Daily Mail last year that she got “just” $100,000 from HBO for the rights to Sex And The City, and in a new interview with The Times Of London, she noted that she’s not getting any money from HBO’s decision to license the show to Netlix. She also dismissed the whole thing as a “Ponzi scheme,” saying that “all of these men are in charge of things, they just keep moving these cards around to make money because every time they move the cards around somebody’s skimming.”
That being said, it seems like she’s doing fine. She’s currently telling her own stories about sex and the city in a stage show called True Tales Of Success And Sex And The City, and she pointed out in the Daily Mail article that she is a “best selling novelist” and has made most of her money from books anyway. The article also points out that she was making the equivalent of $8,000 to $10,000 a month when she was writing for Vogue in the ‘90s, which is… more than what writers tend to make these days.
8 Comments
This is why you get a good attorney to negotiate your contract/license agreement. Seems clear she signed a shortsighted agreement that made no provision for future revenue streams via platforms not yet devised.
Don’t fret, I’m sure if you keep writing catty, bitter articles you’ll make $8,000 some day.
Though she probably doesn’t really care where the show ends up, Bushnell is taking the new licensing deal as an excuse to remind everyone how poorly she’s been served by the entertainment industry. Bushnell told The Daily Mail last year that she got “just” $100,000 from HBO for the rights to Sex And The City…What’s with the condescending tone? This exact same scenario happened when Comedy Central licensed Chappelle Show to Netflix. He made a big stink about it and got paid. Why shouldn’t she try to do the same? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/arts/television/chappelles-show-netflix.html
yeah also weird to be like ‘she had a good paying job 30 years ago so she’s fine’
He wrote and performed his show, she inspired a show. There’s a difference. And anyway Chappelle was wrong to try to use the bully pulpit of his celebrity to change a contract after the fact when he knew the terms when he signed it. And even with his fame he wouldn’t have gotten his way without insinuating that the deal was racist in some manner. I don’t know if Dave was motivated by greed or grievance but this lady doesn’t seem driven by either, which is probably good for her.
Your sour grapes you clearly have about how much you get paid is fucking embarrassing
I, too, wonder about the tone of the article? Instead of subtly berating Bushnell for having earned anything from her creation, shouldn’t the negative focus be on those at the very top that have been arranging terms and conditions so as to prevent anyone except for themselves from earning anything from the creation of work and art?
What percentage of Candace Bushnell’s experience do you think they have captured in the spin-off series And Just Like That?