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International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Open Access Journal

ISSN: 2222-6990

How the Deal Goes Down: The Role of Trust and Reciprocity in Movie Deals

John Yudelson, Ph.D.

Open access

Perhaps nowhere in the world are deals completed in a more public arena and a more
uncertain environment than in the movie business. Movie deals are the culmination of
increasingly formal communication between many parties that obligate the parties to act in
good faith toward each other, resulting in what is believed will be a movie that will be
exhibited.
In order to discover how trust and reciprocity impact movie deal-makers, eighteen people were
interviewed from the movie business that had experience in deals that both succeeded and
failed. The interviewees had from 10 to 30 years of experience in the movie business in various
roles: agents, entertainment attorneys, managers, studio executives, producers, and writers.
The interview data were broken down into themes, two of which were trust and reciprocity.
The results of this analysis confirmed that both trust and reciprocity were extremely important
constructs when analyzing the movie deal-making process. These constructs are seen in many
institutionalized practices in the movie business.

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