Disney angers unions with Pearl Harbor pay wheeze

A row has erupted over Disney's scheme to defer payment to the crew of imminent blockbuster Pearl Harbor. "I want to change the way $100m movies get made," says Bruce Hendricks, the studio's president of motion picture production. But his new method - which involves withholding payment from the film-makers until the movie accrues its target box-office take - is likely to further deteriorate relations between Hollywood studios and beleaguered industry unions.

Disney's new deal may popularise deferments as a way of studios producing more films above $100m while avoiding co-financing pacts, which reduce profits. So far, Pearl Harbor's director of photography, editor, production designer and lighting director have agreed to defer payment - amounting to a saving of between $5m and $10m - while effects house ILM has agreed to "meaningful deferments" said to cost close to $25m.

The studio pledges that if the film reaches a domestic gross of about $140m (a target only a handful of films reached in the last year), crew members will recoup what they would have been paid under normal circumstances.

Critics of the move insist that industry workers may now find themselves having to choose whether to work for cheap or not work at all. Even with deferred pay, they lose money: a salary paid in two years will lose employees the interest they could have accrued in the interim. A spokesman from the Directors Guild of America claimed to be "appalled by this trend". Loadsamoney director Michael Bay happily admits: "I am going into this thinking that I am not going to make a dime. But I would rather gamble on myself."

According to Disney's Hendricks, "certainly the production won't be as comfortable as people are used to. But no one was arm-twisted into doing this movie. Everyone knew that to do this movie, that's what needed to happen". The controversial move, he continues, was "just something I came up with after seeing it done with such studio movies as The English Patient," clearly unaware that that Oscar-winning film's crew have yet to be paid three years after its successful release.