COMP NEWS – The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) has joined the Writers Guild of America (WGA) to strike over declining pay, worsening work conditions, and the movie-making industry’s use of artificial intelligence, forming Hollywood’s biggest strike since the 1960’s.
Jason Sudeikis, Susan Sarandon and thousands of other actors have joined screenwriters for Hollywood’s biggest strike in more than six decades.
Actors will not appear in films or even promote movies during the stoppage.
Major films in production, including the Avatar and Gladiator sequels, may be affected by the shutdown.
The actors are joining writers who walked out in May, concerned about pay, working conditions and the industry’s use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Brian Cox, the lead actor on HBO’s Succession, told the BBC the strike could last “until the end of the year.”
“The whole streaming thing has shifted the paradigm,” the Scottish star told BBC Newscast.
“They are trying to freeze us out and beat us into the ground, because there’s a lot of money to be made in streaming and the desire is not to share it with the writers or the performers.”
A large component of both strikes lies in the transition from cable to streaming over the last decade. Whereas writers and actors used to be paid residuals based on cable syndication, similar compensation has been cut from productions that find their home on streaming platforms.
The strike action is driven in part by an uncomfortable transition to the era of digital streaming, as well as by broader technological changes.
“AI will affect everybody,” Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon told the BBC from a picket line in New York.
“There’s definitely always been the feeling that if it isn’t solved now, how do we ever solve it in the future?” she said.
“If you don’t have the foresight to put something in place for the future, then you’re screwed. It’s clear that nothing is going to change from the top down, it’s going to be up to us at the bottom.”
Both writers and actors have complained that they make far less money than they used to make and that contracts have been undercut by inflation.
Writers in Hollywood say that as pay has declined, necessary work on revisions and edits has ceased to be compensated at all.
For actors, pay for individual roles has declined, forcing them to seek several more roles to make the same amount of money as they did a few years ago.
Writing contracts have become shorter and more perilous, with payment often not included for writers’ work on revisions or new material.
“We are being victimised by a very greedy entity,” Fran Drescher, the current SAG president, said on Thursday. “I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us.”
To read more about the SAG and WGA strikes, click here.
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