Almost six years ago, big thinkers at Hollywood’s Endeavor talent agency, best known as the players behind the industry satire “Entourage” on HBO, drilled into a bothersome question: Why should a star or director work for low pay on a labor of love only to see a film studio or foreign sales company strike it rich if the movie thrives in worldwide theatrical and video markets?

Far better, they reckoned, would be to put those dollars in the pockets of clients and, not incidentally, of the agents who represent them, the New York Times reports.

By late 2003, a young agent, Mordecai Wiczyk, under the wing of the Endeavor partners Ariel Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell, joined with a Harvard Business School classmate, Asif Satchu, to do just that by creating Media Rights Capital.

It soon built high-profile movies , like Alejandro Gonz & #225;lez I & #324; & #225;rritu’s “Babel” and the comedic actor Sacha Baron Cohen’s planned “Bruno” , around clients of Endeavor, which was quietly given part ownership in return for helping to find film projects and make deals.