On July 12, major Hollywood film and television studios and unions representing 160,000 actors entered final negotiations before the midnight deadline to try to avoid a major strike in the entertainment industry. mind.
American writers went on strike in May. (Photo: Forbes)
SAG-AFTRA, Hollywood’s largest union, is demanding higher compensation in the age of streaming TV plus protections around the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Union members plan to strike if negotiations cannot reach an agreement. Many A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep have announced they are ready to quit their jobs.
They will follow the movement of about 11,500 members of the American Writers Guild of America (WGA), who have been on strike since early May, causing repeated late-night television talk shows and disruptions. staged most of the production for the fall shows and shot some big budget movies.
The SAG-AFTRA strike will force many studios to close and put pressure on studios to find a solution.
“Everybody gets nervous and hopes that the answer is right,” said actor Florence Pugh in London, during a promotional event for the upcoming film “Oppenheimer”.
Late on July 11, representatives of SAG-AFTRA agreed to the studios’ request to convene a federal mediator. But the union later claimed that representatives of the studios had “abused our trust” by leaking information to the media and that they would not change the midnight deadline of July 12.
It is the first double strike Hollywood has faced since 1960, when members of the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild called for a halt to work in the battle for rights from films being sold to networks. TV.
“You have to earn $26,000 a year to get health insurance, and there are a lot of people who cross the threshold with their remaining payments. The money generated needs to be distributed in a way that cares about those people. on the sidelines,” actor Matt Damon said at the “Oppenheimer” event.
Unions are battling Netflix, Walt Disney and others over base pay and final pay from streaming services and other issues, including the use of AI. Actors do not want their digital images used without their consent.
Negotiations come at a difficult time for media companies, as they have spent billions of dollars on shows to try to attract new streaming customers.
Disney, NBCUniversal, and Paramount Global lost hundreds of millions of dollars from streaming in the most recent quarter. Meanwhile, the popularity of online video has sharply reduced TV advertising revenue, as the traditional TV audience shrinks.
