SAG-AFTRA have overwhelmingly voted to approve a strike. This will cause massive disruption in the industry, much more so than the current WGA strike.
The Actors guild voted on Monday night — 97.91% of its voting members supported the strike authorization. In fact, actors have already been walking the picket lines.
Expect a massive downturn in production. This strike will immediately halt all film productions.
SAG-AFTRA is pursuing an agenda that includes restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence, higher streaming residuals and limitations on self-taped auditions.
Fact of the matter is that, not just the writers and actors, but the entire industry is going to have to sit down and work out how to do revenue splitting on streaming services.
It’s also a wonderful coincidence that these strikes and negotiations are occurring at the same time as AI has gone mainstream. This threat, and it is a threat, needs to be dealt with before it goes wildly out of control.
If SAG-AFTRA and/or DGA actually do go on strike, alongside WGA, they’ll have the studios over a barrel.
Here’s a message from an industry filmmaker:
As a filmmaker who’s worked on everything from ultra low budget to the behemoth studio movies, it baffles me the glaring in your face paradox that Hollywood is. At face value, Hollywood champions itself as creating stories for the underdog. Most of our awards at every major festival etc almost always goes for these types of stories. Then you work in the industry more and more and you realize as you start to peel back the curtain, the insane economic inequality going on. Just pay the people who are actually making the stories their fair share, and everyone wins. It’s really not a hard ask.
This decade has been such a terrible one for movies. We already had the pandemic halting many productions and projects being shelved indefinitely. Now you have this strike, which could very well last for months. Quality content will no doubt take a hit.