Matt Damon and Ben Affleck went on Joe Rogan and laid out one of the wildest crew deals I have ever heard: a five-tier, performance-based bonus at Netflix for their thriller 'The Rip' that paid all 1,200 crew members — and topped out with a 'Grand Slam' target they were sure no one would ever hit.
The Rip blew up — but the deal is the real headline
Damon and Affleck launched Artists Equity to change how below-the-line workers get paid. On Netflix, their Joe Carnahan-directed 'The Rip' came out swinging with 41.6 million views in its opening days. Behind the scenes, they had negotiated a pay ladder for the entire crew that scaled with viewership, using baseball terms from 'single' up to 'grand slam'. The catch: that top tier required viewership equal to 110% of Netflix’s global subscriber base within 90 days. Yes, 110% — they built the ceiling to be out of reach.
For clarity: Netflix’s 'views' metric is derived from hours watched divided by runtime, so heavy rewatching and global momentum can push that number beyond the total subscriber count. That is the kind of nerdy platform math this deal was betting on — without ever expecting to cash the very top check.
How they got Netflix to say yes
On 'The Joe Rogan Experience' (episode #2440), Damon and Affleck said the negotiation to lock this in was a grind — long, testy, and worth it. They credit Netflix for giving the model a real shot, even though the 'Grand Slam' tier looked absurd on paper.
"Okay, cool. You think you can make this work? We will give you a shot."
Then a 2025 animated hit proved the 'impossible' might not be
The curveball came later: the 2025 animated musical 'K-Pop Demon Hunters' detonated on the service through obsessive rewatches and massive crossover appeal. It shattered records and showed that the astronomical 'Grand Slam' numbers were not just theory. Suddenly, the ceiling Damon and Affleck set as a dare started to look like a target someone could actually hit.
What their crew deal actually looked like
- Five escalating bonus tiers, nicknamed like baseball plays: single through grand slam.
- Eligibility covered everyone: all 1,200 crew members shared in the performance pot.
- The 'Grand Slam' bar: viewership equal to 110% of Netflix’s total global subs within 90 days.
- Benchmarking: they modeled it after Netflix’s rare, culture-dominating mega-hits — and assumed the top tier would stay hypothetical.
- Results so far: 'The Rip' launched with 41.6 million views in its opening days, while the later breakout 'K-Pop Demon Hunters' proved those sky-high thresholds can actually be reached.
Damon’s Soderbergh story: the emotion was real, the movie said no
On Amy Poehler’s 'Good Hang' podcast, Damon told a great one about shooting in a real courthouse for Steven Soderbergh. His character starts apologizing to an entire town; Damon actually chokes up — for real — and Soderbergh shuts it down, saying the emotion is in the wrong movie. They go back and forth until Soderbergh gives him the oddest redirect: play it like an awards acceptance speech, not a confession. That sideways note nails the tone of 'The Informant!' — the 2009 crime- comedy where Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a delusional, self-mythologizing exec who helps the FBI while also tanking his own life with lies and half-baked spy fantasies. It is a perfect example of how a sharp director ’s note can be truer to the movie than 'real' feelings in the moment.
Quick aside: Damon on Nolan’s The Odyssey
Damon has also been candid about how he landed Christopher Nolan ’s 'The Odyssey', saying he only got the part after Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, and Leonardo DiCaprio passed. Not directly related to 'The Rip', but it does tell you how blunt he is about the industry pecking order.
Big picture
Artists Equity’s bet is simple and gutsy: align crew pay with actual performance and trust the chaos of streaming to occasionally deliver monster wins. Between the 'Grand Slam' math and the courthouse story, the throughline with Damon and Affleck is the same — take big swings, and do it in a way that respects the people doing the work.
Would you want to see more streamers build crew bonuses like this into their deals?