Netflix took a rather unusual route with a film that came out earlier this year, The Rip, which allowed nearly 1,200 cast and crew members to financially benefit if the film performed well on the platform. In an industry where streaming projects are typically built around fixed upfront payments, the deal quietly introduced a model that rewarded workers beyond their initial paycheck and set a new precedent in Hollywood.

The arrangement came through Artists Equity, the production banner founded by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, which has pushed for a profit-sharing structure aimed at ensuring not just the stars and the director but more people behind a project participate in its success. While streaming giants like Netflix traditionally pay a flat fee for projects, The Rip quietly became an experiment in something much less common — performance-based compensation.

But the real story lies in how Ben Affleck and Matt Damon convinced Netflix to try something it rarely does.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Artists Equity negotiated a unique agreement with Netflix that tied compensation to performance benchmarks. Under the arrangement, all 1,200 people who worked on The Rip became eligible for a one-time bonus if the movie hit specific viewership thresholds during its first 90 days on the platform, with performance measured against other Netflix titles.

That approach differs sharply from Netflix’s usual payment structure, which generally relies on upfront fees without additional incentives tied to audience performance. The model appears to have paid off. Directed by Joe Carnahan, The Rip debuted strongly after its January release, pulling in 41.6 million views in its first three days, according to platform data, with a respectable 6.8 rating on IMDb from more than 120K voters and a 78% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes as of writing this.

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For Affleck and Damon, though, this was never only about one movie.

Speaking to Variety at the film’s worldwide premiere in New York, Ben Affleck explained that the idea behind the deal came from a growing belief that Hollywood’s economics are changing, and not necessarily in ways that benefit the people working behind the scenes.

“Well, I would not characterise it as, like, an effort to do something commendable... This business is changing, and in order to maintain the integrity of it and to provide the decent middle-class wage that's been provided for decades in this country, you've got to have compensation that works for people.” Affleck told Variety.

The philosophy that all involved should reap benefit in case a project meets success has been central to Artists Equity since its launch in 2022, when the company promised a business model that gave everyone working on a film a share in its upside.

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Do you think more streaming platforms should adopt performance bonuses for cast and crew? Let us know in the comments.