The day when Hollywood stopped

American actors joined the scriptwriter strike. The film industry has the largest crisis since the 1960s

“Full -scale war”: as the media calls the conflict that turned between American streams and film studios, on the one hand, and the unions of actors and scriptwriters on the other. Hundreds of projects, including “one of us”, the films and TV shows of Marvel and the new season of the “Wenses”, are paused. New Europe tells why the actors went to the strike and what the current crisis threatens the American film industry.

What's happened?

On July 14, the negotiations between the American trade union of Sag-Aftra actors and the AMPTP film producers guild expired. 98% of the union voted for the strike. Thus, the guild of film actors joined the strike of the guild of the scriptwriters (WGA), which has been going on since the end of May. In total, at the time of writing, more than 170 thousand workers are striking-in fact, the 134-million-billion industry is paused. The double strike has been going on for the first time since 1960, when Marilyn Monroe was still starring in the cinema, and the union of the actors was headed by the future US President Ronald Reagan.

“I am shocked by how the people with whom we cooperate belong to us! -said the head of Sag-Aftra Fran Dresher at a press conference last Thursday. - From how far we are from each other on many issues. As studios, they refer to the fact that they lose money to the right and left, meanwhile, paying hundreds of millions of dollars with their CEO. This is disgusting. "

“It is impossible to expect that with such a change in the business model that is happening now, agreements with the participants in film production will not change,” Dresher added.

- There are not enough pairs of minor changes in contracts. We are actually offered to move furniture on the Titanic. "

Under the conditions of the strike, actors are not only forbidden to act in films, but also to participate in the promotions of films and TV shows, attend premieres, convents and film festivals. That is, under the threat of not only festivals in Venice and Toronto, but also, if the parties do not agree on the future winter, the Oscar presentation ceremony. A clear example was the London premiere of Christopher Nolan's film “Oppenheimer”, which the stars of the picture left in full force at the time of the start of the strike. Actors will not participate in the promo of Barbie and the future premiere of DC Blue Beetle, which is scheduled for August 18.

In turn, AMPTP expressed regret about the decision of the trade union and stated that the consequences of the strike would be unpredictable. The head of Disney Bob Aiger in an interview with CNBC called the requirements of the striking “unrealistic”, although he receives $ 25 million a year - an amount that most even top stars cannot dream of. Aiger’s statements were criticized by the star of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” Sean Gann: “In the 1980s, the Aiger CEO level earned 30 times more than the lowest-paid industry worker. Now Aiger earns 400 times more. Maybe you have to look in the mirror and ask yourself why we are in crisis? ”

The strike did not start suddenly - negotiations on new terms of the contract between actors and producers have continued since the beginning of the year. In June, when it became clear that negotiations were at an impasse, more than a thousand actors, including Maryl Strep, Rami Malek, Jennifer Lawrence, Ben Stiller and other stars, announced their readiness to start a strike.

All this happens against the background of the ongoing strike of screenwriters and the associated scandals. So, the explosion in social networks was caused by the publication in the publication of Deadline of July 7, where the producer based on anonymity said that

The film studios are ready to wait for the bastling screenwriters the money will end and they will have to return home, if they still have a house - they also have to pay a mortgage.

The scriptwriters began to joke that many have not at home-they have to share housing with friends, and the star of Hellboy Ron Perlman noticed that houses can actually lose not only on mortgages, but also making similar statements. AMPTP hastened to disown the publication in Deadline, some publications called it a fake.

Out of the strike, only the guild of directors (DGA) remains, which managed to conclude a new three -year contract with AMPTP. According to its conditions, deductions to directors for repeated views of content on streaming (Residuals) will increase by 21% in the USA and 76% abroad. In addition, studios were forbidden to use neural networks to replace directors on the set.

In 2023, the consequences of the strike will not yet be very felt, but already at the beginning of next year, spectators may encounter a lack of content on platforms and in cinemas.

What do the actors require?

In the new season of the series “Black Mirror” there is an episode called “Joan is terrible”. According to the plot, the girl notices a series on the streaming, shot due to her life literally a second per second. The girl in the series is played by Salma Hayek. It turns out that the series generates AI on the basis of data that the application collects from the user's phone, and no one hired Salma Hayek - its image is also generated by a neural network.

It sounds crypt, but actually this is a reality. So, at least, they believe in AMPTP, which offered the actors a one -time payment for scanning their appearance and loading it into the neural network. That is, the studios could use the generated image of the actor as much as they like, without paying him a cent. As compensation, AMPTP promised that no one would scan them without the consent of the actors themselves. But this did not interfere with the indignation of the trade union. Everyone remembers how, in the eighth episode of the Star Wars, the dead at the time of the filming of Carrie Fisher “starred”.

Another stumbling block was the fees of artists, or rather, Residuals, that is, payments for each repeated screening of content with the participation of the actor. And if payments from cable TV shows can bring income, then streams pay the actors meager amounts, while actually hiding the number of views of their content.

The situation is illustrated by many artists in their social networks. For example, the star of the series “Orange - New Black” said that the repeated screening of several episodes of the “Law and Order” show, where it was shot, brings her several hundred dollars a year, while Residuals brought her $ 20 per year for repeated shows. The actress worked on the project for six years. There are cases when the actors received exactly one center per year as Residuals.

By the way, the payment of Residuals for repeated shows on TV was the result of the same strike, which was headed by Reagan 60 years ago.

It turns out a skew: while the income of the studios from the transition to streams increased, payments to the actors fell. Many of them are forced to work as a barista, waiters or tickets in cinemas to earn a living. Many are not enough even to have medical insurance: the trade union leads it to the actor if his income is more than 26 thousand dollars a year. Only the minimum number of artists earn so much. In other words, if the stuntman receives little and broke the tooth, he will have to pay for the operation from his pocket.

The main problem is the opacity of the streaming. Following Netflix, streams do not publicly disclose the number of views of their projects, which means that they themselves can decide how much money to actors are paid.

In many ways, the situation is the same as the scriptwriters, when the author of the show nominated at Emmy is forced to remove odnushka without heating.

Sag-Aftra also demanded an increase in fees by actors by 11% in the first year of the contract, while the producers were ready to increase only 5%.

Another requirement was the regulation of “home” auditions of actors, returned to normal during the pandemic period. Actors are forced to spend up to 100-300 dollars to record their sample on the video and send producers-simply because there are no clear rules of such a recording, and the actor may not get a job only because of problems with technology.

What do producers say?

The income of studios and streaming has recently begun to contract. The industry has not yet fully recovered from the consequences of the pandemic: for example, the attendance indicators during the prime ministers have not yet returned to a well -being. The number of Netflix subscribers in 2022 fell for the first time in ten years. Last week, it became known that Disney put up for sale all of her television business, including ABC, FX and FreeForm television channels. The company decided to get rid of cable TV for streaming, but Disney has problems with it: Disney+ and Hulu brought the company in the amount of $ 800 million in the third quarter of the year. At the same time, rumors have been going on for a long time that Bob Aiger plans to sell his Apple media imperial.

All this happens against the background of mass contractions in the entertainment industry. So, in Amazon Studios alone reduced 18 thousand jobs.

How long the strike will last is still unclear. Signs that the parties will make concessions are not noticeable. According to analysts, the strike may threaten the film industry with losses of $ 4 billion.

It is not clear what to do with the transparency of the reporting of streams. As the film critic Tatyana Shorokhova notes , they have a different approach: Amazon takes into account not only views, but also conversions, they are important to purchases on Amazon Prime, while the number of subscriptions is determining for Netflix. How to consider individual projects successful, it is incomprehensible, and the development of uniform criteria is hardly possible.

Meanwhile, Netflix turned to foreign markets and recalled that he earned $ 900 million on a “game in Kalmara”.

And what happens to the scriptwriters' strike?

It is still ongoing, while the parties still crush each other. George Martin joined the strike, for which he was immediately remembered that the announced novel of Wind Winter in the Universe of Game of Thrones he has been writing for more than ten years. Meanwhile, the studios are trying to insert sticking sticks into the wheels. It reaches the absurd: for example, in Universal Studios trimmed tree branches so that the picketers could not stand in the shade. At the same time, the studio seems to violate the environmental legislation of the state of California, and now it faces a fine.