Matt Damon went to write picket posters

Why do actors and scriptwriters of the US film industry and what damage to the second in world history, the temporary collapse of Hollywood, strike.

“They are furious with fat” or “defend their rights”?

Comments on the network indicate a degree of reactions that the beginning strike of Hollywood actors caused.

For the second time, in the world film history, the two largest Hollywood trade unions decided to strike (the first joint action was in 1960, when the actors' union was headed by Ronald Reagan-in fact, the actor’s drift began in politics), stopping the production of current and future projects.

REFERENCE
In the 1960s, the strike lasted almost 150 days. How did you manage to come to an agreement?

An influential person, a mediator, helped negotiations. In 1960 and 1981, he became the "dad of Hollywood", the filmmaker Lew Wasserman. He diplomatically and masterfully knew how to negotiate by the most irreconcilable positions of the conflict. In his youth, he himself represented the interests of the actors, and perfectly understood their needs.

Now not to find such a smart diplomat and respected heavyweight in Hollywood.

And today the actors joined the Hollywood scriptwriters on pickets in the struggle for more profitable contracts, taking into account the development of streaming services and new technologies. Variety writes that the current contract between actors and producers has expired at midnight on the Pacific time on July 12.

The trade union, representing 160,000 Hollywood actors, is ready for a long strike, since negotiations with Hollywood studios and streaming giants did not lead to agreement.

“The old model received fees depending on success,” said Kim Masters, the chief editor of Hollywood Reporter in an interview, “in the new one they cannot even find out what is happening behind the scenes because the streamers are not shared by information.”

“Studios and streaming have made large-scale unilateral changes to the business model of our industry, while at the same time insisting that our contracts remain frozen,” says Duncan Crabri-Irland, the main negotiator of the trade union. “But they underestimated our determination and soon they will understand it.”

According to Fran Dresher, the stars of the series “Nanny”, activists and president of Sag-Aftra, the reaction of the studios to the demands of the actors was “offensive and disrespectful”: “What is happening to us is in all areas of labor when employers create their“ Wall Street ”, and consider their greed, forgetting about the participants work".

How it was

Back in March, the Guild of the Scriptwriters of America (WGA) announced the inadmissibility of the use of artificial intelligence algorithms to create texts, the playwright compared AI-Contain with plagiarism. Neural networks are trained on texts protected by copyright, and then they themselves compile new works on their basis. A collective lawsuit was filed against Openai - for the illegal use of secure information in teaching artificial intelligence.

The guild of film actors (SAG) not only connected to the struggle for a more fair distribution of profit and the best working conditions, but also tries to protect actors from manipulations and speculation of their digital copies. The trade union requires guarantees that artificial intelligence and the faces and voice generated by the computer will not be used to replace the actors.

98% of the guild participants voted for the initiative.

Recall, the other day, American actress Sarah Silverman, writers Richard Kadri and Christopher Golden, as well as radio host Mark Walters, were sued for ChatGPT developers, Meta Platforms* and Openai for copyright violations. The lawsuit states that ChatGPT, Openai and Llama Meta (language model from the Zuckerberg team) studied at illegally acquired sets of data, including their work.

The Equity Fulfillian Trade Union launched in the UK the campaign "Stop the AI ​​that steals the show." Gradually, the technologies of dipfaces - digital avatars, also created by neuralities, penetrate the industry. So far, this is not too “cheap and angry”, but the speed of technology development makes a threat to real actors not at all comic. This threat is believed by activists of the strike, their colleagues should be aware of before the signing of employment contracts, protecting their rights.

Australia supports Hollywood

The Executive Director of the Australian Union of the Media, Entertainment and Arts (Meaa) Erin Madley said that the trade union was in solidarity with members of Sag-Aftra. She considers the requirements of compensation that should be paid streaming services and supports the fears of actors who are waiting for their displacement from the film industry by artificial intelligence:

“Streaming services receive billions of dollars of income and profit, since their audience continues to grow, but this profit, alas, does not affect the earnings of the actors.”

In accordance with the existing agreements in the USA, streaming services pay actors a smaller commission for repetitions of films and television series than broadcasting television.

Consequences

While the strike lasts, the actors cannot act in films or even participate in the advertising campaigns of already shot paintings. So, the funds spent on advertising events will disappear, including on premiere shows and reports from the red paths. Many premieres can be postponed until the fall. The time of creating a number of paintings will also increase. After all, even when the shooting is completed, the actors will not be invited for repeated filming, post -production, advancement.

Actors Killian Murphy, Matt Damon and Emily Blant left the premiere of Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer, which took place in London on Thursday evening.

Nolan told the audience that the stars "went to write their picket posters", adding that he supports them in their struggle. Matt Damon concluded that the reasons for the strike of Hollywood actors are “incredibly important”.

Most likely, many large releases that are in production may suffer: from Avatar to the “Gladiator”, the continuation of “Mortal Kombat” and “Deadpool 3”.

Among the potential victims of the protest campaign, the Disney "ghost mansion" is called. “Andor”, “industry”, “bad sisters”, “Doctor Who”, “Venom-3” and “Mission: Impossible. Deadly reckoning, part 2 ”, as well as long -playing high -quality series. Celebrities through Instagram* express support for a strike. Among them, the star “Better call the salt” Bob Odenkirk, “Sex in the Bolshoi” Sintia Nixon and “Queen of Crick” Jamie Lee Curtis.

Now the production of at least two films that should be shot in Australia on the golden shore is stopped - the Fantasy picture of the Warner Bros on the Mortal Combat - 2 martial arts and the drama of Universal Studios based on the novel by Liana Moriarty “Apples never fall”, with Sam Nile and Annette Bening in the main roles. The WGA strike has already led to the cancellation of the remake of the classic Fritz Lang film "Metropolis" of 1927. The shooting of an eight -part series for Apple TV should have begun in October in Docklands studio in Melbourne.

Experts predict the temporary collapse of Hollywood. The “double strike” can stop the industry in Australia and thousands of Australian workers will probably be fired from film production, which was confirmed by Australian film producers.

The other side

Disney Director General Bob Aiger believes that scriptwriters and actors do not relate to the strikes “realistically”: “I am worried that all this will have a destructive effect on business. There is a huge side damage to people who provide auxiliary services. This will affect the economy of different regions ... This is a shame, it is really a shame. ”

In his opinion , the requirements of screenwriters and actors are “unrealistic”, and with their strikes they complicate the already difficult state of the industry.

According to Deadline, Hollywood studios do not plan to make concessions to the striking screenwriters and actors. They wait for them to be left without money and begin to lose their homes and apartments in order to dictate their conditions for any possible transaction during negotiations.

The leaders of large film companies call it "cruel, but necessary evil."

From a double strike, film festivals will suffer (the nearest - in Melbourne and Venice). The organizers are already negotiating with possible honorary guests and stars, coordinating the conditions of their visit.

Under a big question, holding the international television award "Emmy", which should take place on September 18. According to DEADLINE sources, the prize can be transferred to January 2023.

Until the streams are surrendered. “We had to make plans for the worst. And therefore, we have a rather solid list of releases to delay this situation for a long time, ”said the co-General Director of Netflix Ted Sarandos shortly before the start of the scriptwriter strike.

Most likely, the strike will not affect the independent cinema that shoots at small studios, and daytime soap operas, whose scriptwriters, as a rule, are not in trade unions. But you will not be alive with one "soap".

"How long will it last?" - Asks CNN Business. And does not find an answer.

Bob Aiger from Disney does not imply that the solution will be found in the near future, although negotiations will be resumed.

In any case, it is already obvious to everyone that the film market is experiencing unprecedented revolutionary changes comparable to the advent of sound or computer.

Today, not only the possibilities of the production and promotion of cinema are changing, but also the entire economy of the industry, the relations of the workshops, the ways of delivering films and TV shows to the viewer, which seems to be sideways from all these scandals and shares. But it seems that the viewer who did not wait for the prime minister will be among the victims of the “double strike”.

In the morning of Friday, July 14, near the headquarters of the film company, pickets of participants in the strike are held.

* Recognized in the Russian Federation an extremist organization and prohibited