The collective Internet seems to be ganging up on Spike Lee as if he has any authoritarian say as to what the marketing team does. That's not to say that what happened was terrible, which it was/is.

Blame the studios. Not Spike Lee.

Damn, this sucks. I hope the best for this guy, but he really should have written a contract before doing any work, regardless of who it was for. Will Smith and Pharrell Williams are idols of mine, but I'd still make 'em sign a contract (and maybe an autograph).

Juan should have known better, and after a couple incidents like these I'm sure he'll have better sense (at the cost of lost innocence and faith in other humans) – still doesn't make it OK for that agency to take advantage of a less informed designer in this day and age.

Wish he had posted which agency he was involved with so I can do something to steer potential victims away in the future, but I guess that would just lead to a worse headache for Juan than is already warranted.

Sweatshops take advantage of it's workforce's lack of information and necessity to make ends meet. The fault is squarely on the organization that profits off this situation, not the other way around. Irregardless of the missteps Juan took to protect his own interests, and completely irrelevant to Spike Lee or anyone else's involvement in the actual production, crap like this is unacceptable at any degree IMO.

TLDR?

Looks like he responded: https://twitter.com/SpikeLee/status/406084275969085440

That sounds awful. All I can say is ..... https://vimeo.com/22053820

This reminded me of this from last year http://asylumfilms.co.uk/open-letter/

Do you guys know a good/solid contract template that the community can use to avoid any of this crap?

I feel very sorry for Juan because, I've been working for agencies for the last 2 years and I know how production teams work... If they can rip you off, they will.

That's awful. They used the most cliched excuse as well.

I honestly thought that movie posters were mostly always outsourced to marketing studios. It's why I'm not really a fan of quite a bit of them.

Edit: Also this is meant as no offense to the people who make them. I know the point of most movie posters, I just can't get behind the ones that offend my eyes.