Hollywood faced an actors’ strike on Thursday after negotiations between major American studios and the powerful actors’ union collapsed, denouncing “insulting” salary proposals.
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“After more than four weeks of negotiations, the previous agreement expired at midnight on Wednesday evening with no hope of an agreement, the SAG-AFTRA union noted.
Their positions are far too distant from those of the Alliance of Film and Television Producers (AMPTP), which brings together historical film groups like Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Sony, as well as digital platforms like Netflix, Amazon or Apple.
“AMPTP’s reactions to the union’s key proposals have been offensive and disrespectful of our important contribution to this industry. “Employers have refused to engage meaningfully on some issues and have completely ignored us on others,” the union, which represents 160,000 actors and other professionals in small and large businesses, wrote in a statement released Thursday.
The union office must confirm the start of the strike on Thursday.
If they started this movement, the actors would join the screenwriters who have stopped working since the beginning of May. This dual social movement, bringing together the faces and feathers of the film industry, will be a first in Hollywood since the 1960s.
The two trades are demanding an increase in their remuneration, half-mast in the streaming age. They also want guarantees on the use of artificial intelligence to prevent AI from scripting or cloning their voice and image.
The actors’ strike would be a blow to studio and streaming platform bosses.
Since May, the only productions that have decided to shoot have been based on the scripts already completed in the spring, without being able to modify them. This is especially true of the Amazon-funded The Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power. But without actors, the shooting just wouldn’t be possible.
Only a few talk shows and reality TV programs could be continued.
Actors also have the power to severely hamper the promotion of this summer’s blockbusters, such as Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated “Oppenheimer,” whose London premiere on Thursday will be brought forward by an hour to allow the cast to secure interviews ahead of time a possible strike.
The lack of comedians on the red carpet would leave a huge void in California. Comic-Con, the big fair for American geeks and comic lovers, is scheduled to take place in San Diego without stars from July 20th.
Leading up to the strike, Disney said the launch of its new film, The Haunted Mansion, would be reduced to a “private event” for fans in the event of unrest over the weekend.
Even the Emmys, the equivalent of the television Oscars, scheduled for September 18 are under threat. According to the American press, the production is already considering postponing the event to November or even 2024.
Because nobody knows how long the movement could last. Actors have not gone on strike since 1980. The last writers’ strike, in 2007-2008, lasted 100 days and cost the industry $2 billion.
A double whammy would confirm the existential crisis that is currently plaguing Hollywood. In late June, hundreds of famous actors, including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Stiller, signed a letter saying their industry was at an “unprecedented tipping point.”
For the past decade or so, the advent of streaming has messed up actors’ and screenwriters’ “residual pay” that results from each rerun of a movie or series.
Interesting in the case of television, because this remuneration is calculated according to the price of advertising, these remunerations are much lower for streaming platforms, which do not communicate their ratings and pay a flat rate regardless of success.
Without this vital income to cover the periods of inactivity between productions, the many workers who do not have the status of actor or star author denounce the precariousness of their profession.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence that threatens to replace it only adds fuel to the fire. Disney, for example, used AI to produce the credits for its new series, Secret Invasion, which launched in June.