Crash, a movie I didn't particularly like, cost $7.5 million to make and had worldwide revenues of $180 million. Writer-director Paul Haggis has made a whopping $300,000, and the eight principal actors -- Matt Dillon, Don Cheadle and Sandra Bullock among them -- have recently been cut cheques for $19,000.

And what did they do wrong? They worked for a slice of the "profits."

An excerpt from the NYT story:

The wheels of Hollywood’s money machine always turn too slowly for profit participants, players who agree to take a slice of a film’s revenues in lieu of large salaries up front.

But the pace of payments on “Crash” has especially disappointed those who deferred and reduced their salaries in 2004 to get the movie made.

The pressure has led Lionsgate, the domestic distributor of “Crash,” to try to broker a deal to advance payments to Mr. Cheadle and Mr. Haggis, in the interest of maintaining good relations.

That deal has so far faltered and is contributing to tensions between the cast, producers, writers and director of the film on one side, and Bob Yari, the producer and financier in charge of disbursing payments, on the other. In particular, representatives for Mr. Cheadle, a producer and leading actor on the film; Mr. Dillon; Mr. Haggis; and his co-writer Bobby Moresco have been pressing for explanations as to why payments are so slow in coming.

“We haven’t audited, so we can’t tell if it’s right or wrong,” said Peter Dekom, the lawyer for Mr. Haggis and Mark Harris, another producer, who said he had recently hired an accountant to conduct an audit. “But it’s always a big deal when you go out in the world, and you look at the video units sold, the $55 million of domestic box office, the fact that the movie’s doing well overseas, and then you look at the accounting statements, and it’s Hollywood accounting.”

Mr. Yari, a relative newcomer to Hollywood — “Crash” was his first major hit — said he was aware of the dissatisfaction, but that he was completely up to date on payments.

“They have been correctly paid,” he said in a recent interview. “They will be paid more. This is the process. We’ve done everything aboveboard. If we wanted to not pay people and have them sue us, we wouldn’t pay them at all.”

Mr. Yari said that monies collected from Lionsgate went into a fund before being disbursed, further delaying payment to profit participants, and that little money had come in from foreign distributors, though the film long ago ended most of its theatrical runs. He also said that Lionsgate, which has so far paid him slightly more than $10 million, owes him another $10 million. A Lionsgate executive said that a large sum was expected in the fall when the studio’s pay-television deal with Showtime yields revenues. ...

In Hollywood it is not unusual for squabbles to erupt over dividing the spoils when a small film becomes a very big hit. But part of what is creating bruised feelings with “Crash” is the sense among the starring cast members that their initial sacrifice has not been acknowledged with a gesture, whatever the precise state of collection accounts.

“You’d think that for a movie that won best picture, what you would do is write the actors a check against their profits, or you give them a car, or something,” said a representative for one of the leading actors, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his client had barred him from speaking on the record. “That would be the classy thing to do.” He added: “The money is dribbling in. It’s almost offensive how little money it is.”