It depends on the billionaire.
I’ll bite, name a decent Billionaire.
George Lucas comes to mind as an example this week. Am amazed he’s going out of his way to buy back a franchise that almost did him in, all for the fans.
So instead of more evenly distributing the profit from the franchise to everyone who contributed, he’s going to hand the wealth to an already obscenely wealthy corporation so that he can have control over it again?
You need to own the franchise first. Unless I misunderstand you.
Where do you think he got his billions?
He owned the IP. He ensured that he’d retain merchandise rights and sequel rights via his contract for the original Star Wars film. He made his billions off of that. Mostly merchandise. Then he sold his company LucasFilm (along with those rights) to Disney in 2012 for a few billion in cash and a few billion in Disney stock (making him one of the largest shareholders).
So yeah, he did own the franchise first.
I wasn’t saying he didn’t, in fact that’s a part of the point. If doing all that and selling to Disney was advantageous, buying it back would not be. As it stands right now, he’s going against the billionaire director playbook here.
Or he could have distributed the billions he made, as he was making them, to more equitably pay everyone who’s work generated that wealth.
That’s my point.
