‘Mean Girls’ was free to watch on TikTok for a day, but what about the residuals?
Oct. 3 — it’s a day that every “Mean Girls” fan knows well.
It was the day that Aaron Samuels asked Cady Heron what day it was. And in 2023, it was the day that Paramount Pictures released the 2004 comedy classic in its entirety on TikTok.
Throughout Tuesday, longtime fans and new viewers of the film, written by Tina Fey, could watch all one hour and 37 minutes of it in 23 video clips on TikTok through the official “Mean Girls” account. The film is no longer available on the page.
SAG-AFTRA has approved a deal from the studios to end its historic strike. The actors were on strike for more than 100 days.
The occasion may have been a joyous one for fans who can’t get enough of the Plastics and cool moms, but it wasn’t seen as such a grand event in certain corners of Hollywood.
Less than two weeks ago, the Writers Guild of America and the major Hollywood studios reached an agreement that ended the writers’ strike, an action that lasted 146 days, tossed thousands of people out of work and exposed deep anxiety over changes brought by technology. One central issue was residuals — a topic that has been a sticking point in the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
Screenwriter Van Robichaux, whose credits include “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and who served as a WGA captain for five years, had some qualms about Tuesday’s “Mean Girls” showing when it came to residuals.
Residuals have emerged as a key sticking point in the current pair of Hollywood strikes. But what are they, and how do they work?
“If they posted the whole movie in one post they’d have to pay a residual to the cast & writer & director. By breaking it into short chunks, even still posting it all, they can abuse a contract loophole intended for playing clips on talk shows,” Robichaux claimed Wednesday in an X post.
“As the WGA strike comes to a close, studios find another way not to pay us for our work (and if you think people won’t watch the film this way, you’re obvs not on TikTok),” wrote Rebecca Green, a film producer who has worked on several movies, including “It Follows.”
Actor and writer Dalila Ali Rajah expanded on Robichaux’s claims, adding, “Non-industry folks who may not know: the studios can use snippets of our work w/o compensation for promotional purposes. By putting the film up in small parts, they get $ from the ads that they don’t [have] to compensate us for because of a technical loophole. Part of why we strike.”
Striking actors are hopeful that SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers can reach an agreement — 2½ months after the performers went out on strike.
A spokesperson for Paramount confirmed to The Times that talent will be paid residuals pursuant to the applicable collective bargaining agreement for the use of “Mean Girls” on TikTok.
The Times has also learned that the residuals for showing a film on a platform such as TikTok is 3.6% of Paramount’s gross, shared equally by the cast.
Caroline Renard, WGA strike captain, commented in August — more than three months into the writers’ strike — about the trend of studios using free content on social media as a promotional tool.
“Hmmmm. Are we accounting for whole ass episodes of TV being uploaded on Tik Tok and Twitter in our contracts now?” she wrote on X, with a reference to the industry’s official collective bargaining representative, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. “Cause remember when Apple dropped the entire first episode of Silo on here. AMPTP, Pick up the phone!”
Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.
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