Practice area — Profit participation
When "net profits" somehow never arrive, the deductions are usually the reason. We rebuild the studio's waterfall to show what a participant should have received once the charges are corrected.
Where the money hides
A participation statement is engineered to end in a deficit. The picture can succeed and the participant can still see nothing, because the pool is drained before "net" is ever reached — by a distribution fee taken off the top, overhead layered on the negative cost, interest that compounds before receipts are applied, and, increasingly, a streaming license fee the studio quietly pays itself far below market. Each charge is defensible in isolation. Together they decide the outcome.
Our work is to separate the charges that are customary and contractual from the ones that aren't, quantify the difference, and explain it in terms a fact-finder can follow.
Questions we're retained to answer
Attorney resources
Two working tools for counsel: the Net-Profit Statement Decoder, a line-by-line guide to where a statement buries recovery, and the Profit-Participation Damages Model, which rebuilds the waterfall to estimate what's owed. Request either when you reach out.
How we work
We don't replace your forensic accountant — we supply the industry context that makes the accounting credible: what a distribution fee should be, whether an overhead or interest charge is customary, what a comparable license would have paid, and what the project should reasonably have earned. We're engaged by plaintiffs and defendants, and we work alongside your trial team from early assessment through deposition and trial.
Tell us about the case. We'll give you a straight read on whether we're the right fit — before anyone is retained.
Request a consultationrob@cainexpert.com · +1.310.663.8811