Netflix salaries ‘are spoiling young actors’

YOUNG actors are being overpaid by Netflix and their inflated salary demands mean they are refusing to work for independent film companies, a British director has said.

Nick Moran, who is working with the Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle on Creation Stories, a film about the Britpop scene, said that the streaming giants had flooded the industry with money so that they could benefit from tax breaks.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph at the Cannes Film Festival, the 49-year-old, who starred as Eddie, the card sharp, in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, said: “Amazon and Netflix are killing British independent film. I have one of the best filmmakers of all time as our executive producer, but I can’t get some 20-nothing-year-old kid out of bed because we’re not Amazon or Netflix. Production managers, line producers, everybody is now saying ‘I don’t work for less than blah blah, or I don’t work on a film with a budget less than £5 million’.

“Suddenly, no one’s available, they want a fortune, and they don’t work hard.”

Mr Moran said he hoped his film would be “Trainspotting meets The Wolf of Wall Street” as it charted the rise and fall of Alan Mcgee, the boss of Creation Records who signed Oasis in 1993.

The film, starring Ewen Bremner, Rupert Everett and Suki Waterhouse, tells of Mcgee’s relentless ambition, mental torment, drug use, bankruptcy and his courting of politicians.

“It’s a film everyone should want to be a part of,” Moran said.

‘I have one of the best filmmakers, but can’t get a kid out of bed because we’re not Amazon or Netflix’