Do you hear that? It’s the sound of studio executives reaping what they’ve sewn.
SAG-AFTRA, the union representing Hollywood actors and performers, has voted unanimously to join the Writers Guild of America in saying “nah” to diminishing monetary returns brought about by streaming and a host of other issues.
Per PBS Newshour, SAG-AFTRA president and Beautician and the Beast icon Fran Drescher announced the formal strike at a news conference, saying:
“Employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run. Shame on them. They are on the wrong side of history.”
The national board of SAG-AFTRA made the decision after negotiations broke down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Even with a federal mediator present, the two sides failed to reach an agreement before a deadline that was already extended. This is the first actors’ strike since 1980.
AMPTP said in a statement that the actors’ strike “is the Union’s choice, not ours,” adding, “Rather than continuing to negotiate, SAG-AFTRA has put us on a course that will deepen the financial hardship for thousands who depend on the industry for their livelihoods.” Brave of them to bring up financial hardships that they themselves have caused.
SAG-AFTRA now joins the WGA on the picket lines — the writers guild has been on strike since early May when their own talks with the AMPTP broke down. The WGA hasn’t even been negotiating with AMPTP in recent weeks since the producer group’s attention was on the actors union.
Now, the AMPTP will face both groups at the negotiating table while still presumably convincing themselves that they can’t possibly be the problem.
Apropos, Disney CEO Bob Iger — who is reportedly worth somewhere around $600 million — recently said the actors and writers guilds “have a level of expectation” that is “just not realistic.” He added that the strikes are coming at one of the worst possible times in the industry while it’s struggling to bounce back from COVID — and in Disney’s case, movies like Strange World. Iger stated, “[T]hey are adding to a set of challenges this business is already facing, that is frankly very disruptive.”
Despite Iger missing the point that strikes are literally intended to disrupt, he’s correct that people struggling to pay rent aren’t really concerned about overall turbulence in the industry. But that hardly matters in the big picture, because he’s still trying to sell a product where two-thirds of the people making it are legitimately struggling and desperately unhappy.
Honestly, we’d be content to see all actors and writers leave Hollywood for five years to teach everyone a lesson — except there would be nothing left to come back to, given how dependent studios and streamers are on their talents. Plus, we’d have nothing to write about, so please figure this out quickly.
