Could we not just skip the 30 years of copy right protection or whatever
it is now and just release it to the public domain?
No money will be made, but if people should want to they can view it.
I am sure Internet Archive or some organization would be willing to
host such movies, and not make any attempt at making a profit from it.
Even better would be to turn all the assets that went into the creating it
into the public domain as well.
They should be able to say
"Well this movie is total sh*t and we want a tax write off, once it is
all done and we have recovered that money we will make it available to
the public (at no cost to us))
Is the problem that if anyone was allowed to watch it,
they may conclude that the movie had potential and thus the
tax write off is not made in good faith?
Had it been 105 year it would have been an order of magnitude. Being only 5 years off an order of magnitude justified the “almost an order of magnitude”.
You don't “calculate” orders of magnitude, that the point of manipulating them in the first place. And an order of magnitude colloquially means “one more digit”, hence the original remark.
I appreciate the irony of nitpicking about a concept that merely exist to allow for low precision napkin math.
But in this case, the "napkin" math of 95 years would be off by 200 years! Hardly a useful estimate for this particular topic. Still confused where you come up with 105 years as an order of magnitude from 30.
You can reasonably imagine a movie that has negative brand value. In a ridiculous scenario, imagine if the first attempt at Iron Man 2 was 90 minutes of Robert Downey Jr engaged in hardcore sex and shouting racial slurs at people. Even if some people are interested in watching (or even buying) this, it should be clear that a studio has the right to destroy it.
The studio spent $100m to make this thing. Maybe a competing studio would like to buy it for $50m so they can destroy the MCU or whatever. But the studio considers the brand harm to be so great that there is no way that they'll sell it. Should the studio have to artificially reduce their expenses by $50m because of this potential buyer even though the studio in no way agreed to this price?
You raise a valid point that I had not considered when it
comes to reputation.
I agree that the studio has the right to destroy films.
I do think that is unfortunate when they do.
I dont think, but I have no data so its pure speculation, that
at least the majority of movies that get destroyed would not have
much of a influence on the studio's reputation.
Perhaps more for actors or directors.
On your second point I dont quite follow.
In my post my suggestion is that after the studio has received its
tax credits, the film would be available in the public domain for free.
Post tax break the movie has little utility for the movie.
This may require an adjustment in tax law.
I am in no way well versed in that and I have little idea how it works.
The tax code could be amended for this scenario that the work being
used for tax credit does not have to be destroyed.
It isn't a tax credit. It is an offset on profit, same as if the studio spent a bunch of money on preproduction and never got to the principle photography phase or if the studio spent a bunch of money on production but stopped during editing.
As someone stated above, there might be rights issues with the music and other elements used in the movie where the IP creators expect to get paid with every viewing etc.
No money will be made, but if people should want to they can view it.
I am sure Internet Archive or some organization would be willing to host such movies, and not make any attempt at making a profit from it.
Even better would be to turn all the assets that went into the creating it into the public domain as well.
They should be able to say "Well this movie is total sh*t and we want a tax write off, once it is all done and we have recovered that money we will make it available to the public (at no cost to us))
Is the problem that if anyone was allowed to watch it, they may conclude that the movie had potential and thus the tax write off is not made in good faith?