2023-07-14 09:18:28
Following in the footsteps of the screenwriters who stopped work on May 2, it is the turn of the actors’ union to announce the walkout, jeopardizing theatrical programming and streaming production for the whole of 2024.
Bob Iger looked gray during his television interview on Thursday. Informed minute by minute of the improbable negotiations between the actors’ union and representatives of Hollywood employers, the big boss of the Disney empire, paid 27 million dollars a year for his next two years at the head of the group, was sorry for the lack of realism of the employees and intermittent workers of the American show “in view of the financial constraints of the industry”. Seeing the deluge of memes and sarcastic tweets that accompanied the historic announcement of the all-out strike by Hollywood actors, a few hours later, his words of indolent mogul could even have contributed to the breakdown of the talks, and to the greater industrial social movement for… 63 years.
For the first time since 1960, when a comedian named Ronald Reagan led a six-week strike by the Screen Actors Guild, the profession’s current union, SAG AFTRA, representing 160,000 actors, stunt performers and dubbing artists together with the scriptwriters’ walkout, still in effect since May 2, to completely paralyze the most powerful entertainment factory in the Western world and jeopardize theatrical programming and streaming production for the whole of 2024.
Percentage on streaming subscriptions
In the battle that begins, the employers’ federation of the studios (the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) is confronted with an opposition to its measure: none less than Fran Drescher, the renowned actress of A Nanny from Hell, world famous for her inimitable laugh, now president of the SAG-AFTRA union of television and radio artists. During a press conference in Los Angeles, the actress confirmed the unbridgeable gap between the protagonists of Hollywood. “The business model has been turned upside down by streaming, digital and artificial intelligence, she claimed. If we don’t stand up now, we run the risk of being replaced by machines and big business.”
Remuneration is at the forefront of demands, unsatisfied by the proposal of a 5% increase by studio management considered to be below inflation. More deeply, the actors lament the inexorable reduction of payments for television reruns in a show biz dominated by streaming and accessible films “on demand” on Netflix, Max or Hulu. The actors ask to receive 2% of the amount of subscriptions from Streaming sites, an impossible requirement in the eyes of the studios, which recall that they are barely recovering from the ravages of the Covid era and are still accumulating losses in their streaming activities.
The promotions deserted, the Emmys in danger
The other concern relates to technological development. For having refused to give specific guarantees to the screenwriters, who have been on strike for more than three months, the studios are now suffering the rage of the actors in the face of the incursions of artificial intelligence and digital technologies in their profession. First, the union protests against the possible exploitation of the appearance and image of the artists, scanned by the studios against payment of a day’s work and then reused without payment of royalties in multiple subsequent productions.
The determination of the strikers, for many of them galvanized by the revelations on the salaries of show biz bosses, already promises damage for Hollywood. The strike prohibits the promotion by actors of films about to be released in theaters. The cast of Christopher Nolan’s new film Openheimer left the film’s London premiere on Thursday night shortly before news broke that negotiations in Los Angeles had broken down. The Emmy Awards, scheduled for September, could be compromised for this reason, like the presence of stars on nightly talk shows, already disrupted or even interrupted since early May by the strike of screenwriters and television editors.
Ted Sarendos, boss of Netflix, had announced in April, given the risks of a walkout of the screenwriters, that he had sufficient stocks of productions to hold. But the strike announced today jeopardizes the filming necessary for next year’s broadcasts with chain consequences, catastrophic for the studios. Worrying sign. In Los Angeles, the number of applications for filming permits has already dropped by 63% compared to last year. The mobilization of the actors promises to add to the depression of the show biz majors, and of the spectators. On television, only the afternoon soap operas are guaranteed a broadcast. Their actors are rarely unionized.
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