Wage And Hour Suits Changing Hollywood Internships For Good

When an unpaid intern on the set of Fox Searchlight’s “Black Swan” filed a lawsuit claiming wage and hour violations, he set off a domino effect of similar suits that is changing what many have seen as a doorway to breaking into Hollywood. Eric Glatt, who was 40 and had an MBA when he secured the internship on “Black Swan,” pursued legal action after reading the Labor Department’s six criteria for determining whether an internship should be paid. That suit resulted in a summary judgment which, while under appeal from Fox, has led NBCUniversal, Viacom and others to begin paying interns while Fox and its affiliated production companies have suspended internships altogether.