On The Joe Rogan Experience, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck revealed that Netflix approved an unprecedented, five-tier performance bonus for the entire 1,200-person crew of The Rip, featuring a nearly impossible "Grand Slam" viewership threshold that they never expected anyone to actually hit. When Hollywood powerhouses Matt Damon and Ben Affleck launched their production company, Artists Equity, they did so with a radical mission: to reshape how the people behind the camera get paid. 

The Rip, directed by Joe Carnahan, exploded onto the platform with a staggering 41.6 million views in its opening days. Yet, the real story was not just the viewership, it was the unprecedented, five-tier performance bonus Damon and Affleck negotiated for all 1,200 crew members.

It was a structure so aggressively ambitious that even its creators believed the top tier was entirely impossible to reach.

  Appearing on The Joe Rogan Experience (#2440), Matt Damon and Ben Affleck opened up about the grueling negotiations required to secure the deal. Both actors noted that the process tested their patience and resolve, ultimately making the hard-won agreement feel even more rewarding.

"This is the first time that we were able to actually create like a schedule where it's like because and by the way, we wouldn't have been able to do that without Netflix going, 'Okay, cool. You think you can make this work? We'll give you a shot,'" they revealed.

The escalating payout tiers were structured like baseball ranging from a single to a grand slam with the ultimate "Grand Slam" threshold requiring a film to pull in viewership equivalent to 110% of Netflix's total subscriber base within 90 days.The filmmakers benchmarked this impossible metric against the platform's rarest mega-hits, fully expecting it to remain a hypothetical ceiling. However, the streaming ecosystem proved more unpredictable than they anticipated.

The unexpected catalyst came via the 2025 animated phenomenon K-Pop Demon Hunters. By shattering records through obsessive repeat viewership and massive cultural crossover appeal, the musical fantasy validated that these astronomical numbers were actually achievable, proving to Netflix and the industry that Artists Equity's wild incentive structure was a viable blueprint for the future of cinema.

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This knack for navigating unpredictable creative boundaries is nothing new for Damon, who learned early in his career that sometimes reality needs a sharp directorial reality check.

Recalling a pivotal moment from his career on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, Matt Damon explained that a production once filmed a scene inside a real courthouse where his character had to apologize to an entire town, with the cast filling the gallery behind him. As Matt Damon began delivering the apology, he genuinely became choked up, only for director Steven Soderbergh to stop him and tell him the emotion belonged in the wrong movie. Damon pushed back, insisting that the reaction had been real, before challenging the director to show him how the scene should actually work.

"I start this apology and get legitimately choked up. Steven walks over and goes, ‘No.’ I’m like, ‘F*** you. That s*** just happened, man. That was real.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, no, you’re in the wrong movie’," Damon shared.

Steven Soderbergh eventually gave Damon one bizarrely perfect direction, asking him to play the apology like an awards acceptance speech rather than a confession of guilt. That twisted perspective perfectly captures The Informant!, the 2009 biographical crime comedy-drama following Mark Whitacre, a corporate executive who exposes a massive price-fixing conspiracy and secretly begins working with the FBI. But the supposed hero is also a deeply delusional and unreliable narrator who imagines himself as a James Bond-style secret agent while lies, fraud, and making his own decisions slowly wreck the mission.

From redefining character performance to rewriting corporate payout structures, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck continue to challenge entertainment conventions. By betting big on their crew and trusting the chaos of streaming metrics, they are successfully carving out a fairer playground for everyone involved.

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What do you think of Artists Equity's performance-based model? Let us know in the comments!