2 Comments
User's avatar
Elian's avatar

Dumb Q, but if upset price includes a format, why aren't studios always getting one? We always seem to pay on top!

Ken Basin's avatar

Not a dumb question -- and I don't really know the answer! There's clearly some backstory to the fact that there's no difference in the upset price for story/teleplay and for format/story/teleplay. I assume this has something to do with the logic of upset price being required only for the first thing that's written, but I can't quite pinpoint how. I wasn't able to (quickly) figure out when these rules were first designed and introduced, but I assume formats are more common today than they were then, so there probably wasn't much expectation of ordering formats and scripts together from inception? But I guess I can't give you much more of an answer than "Custom and practice?"