Hollywood Strike Expands: How Will It Affect What You Watch?

Except for execs, Hollywood studios aren’t doing great, either

As streaming replaces more lucrative pay TV, competition is brutal and revenues are elusive. Now that there are 500 to 600 shows a year — 10 times more than before streaming — there aren’t enough viewers to make them all profitable. Writers often used to get paid for 22-episode seasons, 40 weeks’ work, then get lucrative “residual” pay when shows are sold for syndicated reruns and foreign markets. Now that many seasons have eight episodes, residuals are shrinking faster than glaciers, and increasingly writers get hired to launch a show, then get the boot. Studios are laying off tens of thousands. Long-term job security for writers and actors was always nil, but now it’s less than ever.

“It’s like you’re negotiating for a bit more beach when a tsunami is about to send your entire house collapsing,” says Galloway, “and you say, ‘No, no, no, we want a little more sand!’ ”

“This is the most important strike in Hollywood history because it’s over existential issues,” UCLA film historian Jonathan Kuntz told The Hollywood Reporter. “We’re entering an era of scarcity. This is about a shrinking pie that’s now being divvied up.”

What the studios are offering

The studio group AMPTP says it has offered “historic pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, audition protections, shortened series option periods, and a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses for SAG-AFTRA members.”

AI is a sticking point in the negotiations​

“They proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness and to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want, with no consent and no compensation,” said SAG negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble, we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines,” said Drescher.

Actor John Cusack called AI “a giant copyright identity theft.”

When will the strike end?

“The 1988 strike, the first I was a part of, lasted 22 weeks, the longest in Hollywood history,” tweeted Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, whose show A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is now on hold. “The 2007-2008 strike, the most recent, went for 100 days. This one may go longer.”

Studio sources told Deadline the hope is to protract writers’ and actors’ suffering to break their will to resist. “Not [until] Halloween precisely, but late October, for sure, is the intention,” said one producer. “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive said.

AMPTP said the anonymous sources did not reflect its actual intentions.

What’s the impact on the shows and movies we want to see?

SNL and late-night talk shows aren’t shooting new shows. The fall TV season will feature more reality shows like The Masked Singer, The Amazing Race and Survivor, and reruns instead of new seasons and new shows. The September Emmy Awards might be delayed as long as January. Actors cannot campaign for Emmys, fall film festivals won’t have starry red carpets to launch Oscar campaigns and you won’t see stars on TV shows promoting their hits, including summer blockbusters like Barbie and Oppenheimer. Upcoming shows and movies will be delayed, including Ghostbusters 4, Mufasa: The Lion King, Avatar 3 and 4, Deadpool 3, the Gladiator sequel, Hacks, The Old Man and 1923. Basically, the industry is holding its breath until the High Noon-like showdown ends.

How about those $7.99 a month streaming services we love?

Expect to pay more for streaming services in the future. Ad revenues are down, the strike will be costly, the writers and actors will likely get some sort of increase in pay and studios are less likely to cut CEO pay than they are to ask consumers to help bail them out of a frightening financial future.