The actor and director explained how his production company shares streaming revenue and crew bonuses through its partnership with Netflix.
Ben Affleck has detailed the inner workings of Artists Equity, the production company he founded four years ago with Matt Damon, outlining a business model designed to give creative talent faster access to streaming profits.
The company, formed in 2022 with RedBird Capital’s Gerry Cardinale, operates out of a two-floor West Hollywood office. It shares all streaming revenue with above-the-line talent, including screenwriters, directors, actors and producers, in addition to standard fees. Artists Equity also negotiated performance-based bonuses with Netflix that pay out a film’s entire crew.
Cardinale described the partnership between the two founders plainly: ‘Matt wants to win Oscars and Ben wants to make money. Together, they’re the perfect person.’
Partnership with Netflix
Artists Equity holds a first-look deal with Netflix to produce and distribute films for streaming, making it the platform’s leading outside producer of original movies. The agreement covered their onscreen reunion, ‘The Rip,’ released in January, as well as ‘Animals,’ an upcoming abduction thriller directed by and starring Affleck alongside Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun and Gillian Anderson. Netflix also purchased Affleck’s artificial intelligence startup, InterPositive, for nearly $590 million in cash in July.
Affleck, 54, said he had previously avoided discussing the company’s financial model publicly because he did not want it to be viewed merely as a joint vanity project. He explained that Artists Equity wanted to counter an industry history where back-end participation promises often fail to result in actual payouts for talent.
The company’s headquarters reflects the pair’s long working history, featuring items such as a replica of Batman, whom Affleck played in four films from 2016 to 2023, and Damon’s orange spacesuit from ‘The Martian.’ Outside Affleck’s office sits a credenza holding the Oscars the two won for writing the 1997 film ‘Good Will Hunting.’ Affleck also won a best picture Oscar for producing ‘Argo,’ which he directed and starred in.
Views on stardom and ticket sales
Affleck also addressed the broader film business, noting that while box office revenue has nearly returned, theater attendance will likely remain below historical peaks. He pointed to uniform ticket pricing as an oddity of theatrical exhibition, recalling that moviegoers paid the same amount to see ‘Armageddon’ as they did for ‘Chasing Amy.’
He added that traditional stardom has grown harder to establish today because studios no longer spend as heavily to market individual actors to national audiences, even though popular performers like Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jacob Elordi continue to draw crowds.
