Equitable remuneration and credit in film: matters that are rarely litigated

You worked on a film that did well, but your fee was fixed before anyone knew how successful it would be. Can you still claim more? And what if the credit you were given does not match the work you actually did? These two questions are rarely litigated, but the District Court of Amsterdam has now considered them.

Film law is rarely litigated. That is precisely why a recent interim judgment of the District Court of Amsterdam seemed worth pausing over.

See: District Court of Amsterdam, 20 May 2026, ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2026:5771.

What the filmmaker is claiming

In essence: a filmmaker worked on a film and takes the view, after the event, that he received too little (given the high revenues) and that he carried out more, or different, work than the work for which he was credited. He is therefore claiming additional remuneration and wants to be credited as co-director, including in the end credits and on IMDb. That last credit is no side issue. In the international film industry IMDb is where people read your track record, and a credit there feeds directly into what you can ask for on your next production.

The other party argues that a single fixed fee (a lump sum) was agreed, and disputes that he acted as co-director. That he is an author within the meaning of the Dutch Copyright Act is not in dispute between the parties; what is at issue is the level of the remuneration and the question of which role he performed (the credit).

Legally, two things are at the heart of this, and both are awkward in film practice.

What if the film earns more than expected?

First, the remuneration. The law gives authors a right to equitable remuneration where they grant exploitation rights (article 25c of the Dutch Copyright Act) and, where there is a serious disproportion between the agreed remuneration and what the exploitation brings in, a right to additional equitable remuneration (article 25d, the so-called bestseller provision). For filmmakers those rules apply through article 45d. What amounts to equitable remuneration in a given case, and whether the agreed lump sum meets that standard, cannot be read straight off the statute. The bestseller provision is harder still in the film world, because the revenues accrue to a range of parties: the cinema, the distributor, and only then the producer. On top of that, for all of those parties, a box-office hit is often set against a number of more modest successes and here and there an outright flop (which costs money rather than earning it).

Article 25c looks at the moment of contracting: is the remuneration proportionate to what you deliver? Article 25d looks back at the revenues after the event. For filmmakers both apply through article 45d.

Assistant director or co-director?

Second, the classification. What exactly is the difference between an assistant director and a co-director, and when does that give rise to a right to be named (article 45e of the Dutch Copyright Act)? Here too, statute and commentary offer little guidance.

The court is not going to rule on these rather more subjective legal questions itself. It has ordered an investigation by three experts: a lawyer as chair, together with an expert with production experience and an expert with directing experience from the film industry. It now falls to the experts to consider how equitable and additional remuneration is to be calculated in this case, and which invoices should or should not play a part in that.

This is an interim judgment. The final judgment, with the ultimate ruling, will follow later. I am very curious to see how the equitable remuneration will have to be calculated, and what the industry can learn from it.

Position as at 24 July 2026. The final judgment has not yet been given.