Also known as writer residuals · reuse payments
Payments made to a writer when a film or series is reused after its first run — broadcast repeats, licensing to another market, home video, and streaming. They are compensation for reuse, separate from the fee paid to write the script.
Residuals exist because a script is bought once and exploited for decades. The initial fee covers the writing; residuals attach to the afterlife — a rerun, a foreign sale, a streaming licence. For many working screen writers they are a large share of lifetime income, and they arrive long after the work is finished.
They are not the same as royalties, though writers reach for that word because publishing and music use it. A book royalty is a percentage of sales owed to the author under a publishing contract; a residual is a reuse payment owed under the Guild's Minimum Basic Agreement, and it exists only where the work is covered by that agreement. Non-signatory work generally produces no residuals at all, whatever the contract calls the payment.
Credit is what determines who receives them. Because residuals follow the writing credit rather than the drafts, credit arbitration is not an argument about billing — it decides who is paid for the reuse of a film for as long as it earns. That is why the credit rules in the MBA get the attention they do.
Streaming changed both the formula and the visibility, and the terms are renegotiated each MBA cycle. Treat any specific figure as dated: the Guild publishes the current schedules, and those are the only authority on what is owed for a given reuse.
No, though the words get swapped. A royalty is a share of sales under a publishing or music contract; a residual is a reuse payment owed under the WGA's Minimum Basic Agreement when covered work is rerun, licensed, or streamed.
No. Residuals flow from the Guild agreement, so they generally attach to work for signatory companies. A spec sold outside that system, or work for a non-signatory, usually produces none.
They follow the final writing credit, not the number of drafts. That is why credit arbitration matters financially and not just reputationally -- credit decides who is paid for reuse.
It depends on the medium, the market, and the MBA in force, and the streaming terms in particular have been renegotiated repeatedly. Check the Guild's current schedules rather than any figure quoted second-hand.
