The selection to go on strike, which Drescher advised USA In the present day greater than 90 p.c of SAG voted to authorize, has already had speedy implications for the trade, with Disney formally pausing manufacturing on Deadpool 3, which is due out subsequent yr. Different movies in manufacturing anticipated to see pauses (though nothing is confirmed) embrace Beetlejuice 2 and Gladiator 2. Therefore why the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers (AMPTP), the group that represents the bargaining pursuits of film studios and streaming companies, has been so instantly vocal towards the strike.
“AMPTP member firms entered the negotiations with SAG-AFTRA with the purpose of forging a brand new, mutually helpful contract,” the group mentioned in a press release. “The AMPTP offered a deal that provided historic pay and residual will increase, considerably increased caps on pension and well being contributions, audition protections, shortened collection choice intervals, and a groundbreaking AI proposal. A strike is actually not the result we hoped for as studios can’t function with out the performers that carry our TV exhibits and movies to life.”
But SAG management has already fired again, difficult the self-esteem that AMPTP’s synthetic intelligence proposal was “groundbreaking.” In line with chief SAG-AFTRA negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Eire (through CNN), “They suggest that our background performers ought to have the ability to be scanned, receives a commission for in the future’s pay, and their firm ought to personal that scan, their picture, their likeness, and have the ability to use it for the remainder of eternity in any mission they need with no consent and no compensation.”
All of this frustration with studios and streaming companies echoes the WGA’s grievances with an trade the place a author on successful streaming collection like The Handmaid’s Story can nonetheless wind up driving his executives round as an Uber driver, and which likewise sees the approaching sea change of A.I. know-how as an existential risk.
Curiously, it additionally echoes the final time SAG and AFTRA went on strike, really paving the way in which to the merging of these then-separate organizations. It was additionally the final time actors tried to considerably reshape the Hollywood enterprise… with combined outcomes.
Whereas the WGA has gone on strike eight instances, the actor’s guild solely went on complete strike twice earlier than 2023. The primary is the aforementioned 1960 incident, however maybe the extra noteworthy for 2023 is when the actors went on strike a yr earlier than writers did in 1980. This was the yr the place actors tried to barter how profit-sharing would work within the age of dwelling media—which gained them small concessions whereas nonetheless arguably shedding the battle.