I doubt that key grip guy was in one of those unions though, was he? I'm certain there are a lot of people that are in the business but not in those unions that are hurting.

Key grips get their chance to negotiate (or strike) next year.

Georgia is a right to work state, so a far lower % of our film industry employees are unionized here than in CA. My neighbor isn't in a union as far as I know. (He might be, but he's never mentioned it to me.)

I don't at all mean to be insensitive to people like your neighbor. That absolutely sucks. Just all the more reason for the studios to meet the guilds even halfway and end this mess.

I'm with you.

I've paid very little attention to the writers strike. Just sharing my experience on the subject of strikes.

It truly makes no sense for the legacy studios not to at the very least start negotiating with WGA and SAG. Why they continue to stay in bed with the tech companies who are trying to destroy them is absolutely beyond me. #wgastrong #sagstrong

— Phillip Iscove (@pmiscove) July 20, 2023

They’d rather tank their holiday season than pay the writers and actors a relative pittance https://t.co/FvPafDSTBt

— Matt Zoller Seitz (@mattzollerseitz) July 21, 2023

taxpreparer said:

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Somebody (who knows) help me understand. When the UAW strikes, it is against Ford, or GM, or another specific car maker. Why do the studios get to act as a single entity instead of each having to negotiate with the unions?

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supposedly the UAW is going on strike against the Big Three later this summer... along with UPS

there could be 623,000 Americans striking by the end of the summer.

so what is happening now on American television stations?

are they going to run out of TV shows to put on the air at some point?

TCTTS said:

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It truly makes no sense for the legacy studios not to at the very least start negotiating with WGA and SAG. Why they continue to stay in bed with the tech companies who are trying to destroy them is absolutely beyond me. #wgastrong #sagstrong

— Phillip Iscove (@pmiscove) July 20, 2023

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What does this mean?

How are tech companies destroying them?

https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/the-economics-of-bad-films

I thought this was an interesting listen from a former insider who wrote a book about the spec script boom. He argues the strike in '88 paved the way for the spec script boom in the 90s and reality TV. It's kind of wonky in places. Some interesting background and discussion about the good and bad outcomes for writers and studios from previous strikes. And they talk about (if a little conspiratorial) the future of AI use by the studios.

full disclosure: the interviewee seems to be more on the side of studios, and Andrew Heaton often works for ReasonTV, the libertarian magazine

aTmAg said:

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TCTTS said:

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It truly makes no sense for the legacy studios not to at the very least start negotiating with WGA and SAG. Why they continue to stay in bed with the tech companies who are trying to destroy them is absolutely beyond me. #wgastrong #sagstrong

— Phillip Iscove (@pmiscove) July 20, 2023

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What does this mean?
How are tech companies destroying them?

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Cash starve the smaller studios/producers, purchase their upcoming IP for pennies on the dollar, and then reach agreement with the unions.

TCTTS said:

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TCTTS said:

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I could of course end up being completely wrong, but I'm becoming less and less convinced the studios are going to be able to hold out for months, if only because their fall movie slates are in far more jeopardy than they ever considered, and directors are pressuring them left and right to delay movies that depend heavily on actor promotion. Take the Zendaya-starring Challengers, for instance, that's scheduled for mid-September. Zendaya was paid $10M for that movie and there's just no way Amazon releases it without her massive social media sway and promotion. That's partly *why* they paid her what they did. I also know for a fact that Warner Bros is silently freaking out about Dune: Part Two in that regard. The last thing they want to do is release it without their insanely popular young cast being able to help market it. Apply that to a ton of other movies this fall, and the studios are in for a world of hurt. Considering a week ago they were relatively convinced the actors weren't going to strike at all, and I truly do think that behind the scenes the studios were caught off guard and are now scrambling. Never mind how this is about to affect summer 2024. Another month of this and most summer 2024 movies are going to be forced to delay as well.

Granted, there's no way any of this gets resolved before Labor Day, but, knock on wood, the idea of this thing lasting until November or so is seemingly less and less likely, unless the studios really are hell bent on blowing the whole thing up…

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Release dates for #DunePartTwo, #ColorPurple and #Aquaman2 could be up in the air due to the strikes.https://t.co/V78xuxzgEK pic.twitter.com/QL2wF3xKAp

— Variety (@Variety) July 21, 2023

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Zendaya R-Rated Pic 'Challengers' From Luca Guadagnino Heads To Spring 2024 Due To Actors Strike https://t.co/lNGcQGOaOL

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) July 21, 2023

She looks like an alien in that still

To me, six months more of attrition, of barely having movies that people want to see in theaters just three years after a pandemic closed them down, doesn't seem like the way to preserve the health of an industry. But they don't pay me $200 million a year, so what do I know?

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) July 21, 2023

moviegoers: wow we love the movies, we're all seeing 2 movies this weekend, the movies are back baby

movie studios: cool we are cancelling all the fall movies

— Ben Rosen (@ben_rosen) July 21, 2023

tk for tu juan said:

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aTmAg said:

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TCTTS said:

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It truly makes no sense for the legacy studios not to at the very least start negotiating with WGA and SAG. Why they continue to stay in bed with the tech companies who are trying to destroy them is absolutely beyond me. #wgastrong #sagstrong

— Phillip Iscove (@pmiscove) July 20, 2023

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What does this mean?
How are tech companies destroying them?

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Cash starve the smaller studios/producers, purchase their upcoming IP for pennies on the dollar, and then reach agreement with the unions.

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Are you saying they are somehow starving the studios or that the studios are already starved and so tech companies are buying IP of existing starved studios?

How SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP Talks Broke Down After Calls to CEOs, a Strike Delay Demand and Rebuffed Offers https://t.co/EKsHmLY6Th

— Variety (@Variety) July 21, 2023

I'm for the most part in agreement with you. But there's another big element in play, and that is the big tech companies entering the market and disrupting it greatly. And market forces don't really effect Apple (yet) because they have insane amounts of money and revenue streams unrelated to Hollywood.

double aught said:

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I'm for the most part in agreement with you. But there's another big element in play, and that is the big tech companies entering the market and disrupting it greatly. And market forces don't really effect Apple (yet) because they have insane amounts of money and revenue streams unrelated to Hollywood.

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The worst way to face the Apple threat is to overpay your employees. And if your industry is threatened by a new Juggernaut, stupidest thing an employee can do is go on strike.

And market forces always effect everybody. Nobody is immune. Not even the US Government, which spends more in 23 days than Apple's yearly revenue.

Minimum wage is less than $10/hr, right? Paying someone 10x certainly doesn't make sense, but is that what these people are asking for? Maybe I'm wrong, but I understood it to be a relatively minor investment/increase.

A minor increase is still an increase and comes out of somebody's pocket. This is a labor negotiation, whats fair is whatever is ultimately agreed to by both parties. The writers decided to go on strike to harm the studios financially and force them to give the writers more favorable terms. Now they are crying that the studios are (apparently) going to call their bluff and see who runs out of money first. The writers are acting like they have a right to do the jobs they want to do for the pay they want to receive and that's just not the case.

Prophet00 said:

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Minimum wage is less than $10/hr, right? Paying someone 10x certainly doesn't make sense, but is that what these people are asking for? Maybe I'm wrong, but I understood it to be a relatively minor investment/increase.

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Obviously it's not that minor as the studios preferred enduring a strike over it.

And there should be no minimum wage. That does more harm than good as it increases unemployment for the many who aren't lucky enough to get a job. In the old days, there was no minimum wage and yet people making LESS than our current minimum wage were still able to afford things and even save money.

The unintended consequences are always worse than the supposed benefits.

For example, in 2009ish some 40 year old moron quit his $95,000/year job to pursue his dream of being a film editor. He willingly took an unpaid intern job for the Black Swam movie, where he got coffee and pillows for the director. He didn't like the experience and so afterwards sued to retroactively get paid. Even though he agreed to be unpaid (and didn't really do anything of much value worthy of pay). Obviously, liberals across Hollywood championed this guy's cause, saying he deserved a "fair" wage. And some idiotic court granted him that pay. So then guess what happened next? Now it's damn hard to be an unpaid intern anymore. And many people who try to break into industry (not just Hollywood) are now screwed.

These people should be glad that they don't have to PAY for experience. A&M charged about $80K for my son. If that was free it would have been a steal. The fact that "pay" of -$20K/year and $20K/year is okay, but $0 is EVIL is idiotic.

It looks like the idiots who supported this sort of thing are now feeling the consequences of it. They should look in the mirror. Not blame everybody else for their woes.

They are asking to come to the table and ultimately determine a scenario that is mutually beneficial to both parties, which would include an increase that follows the rise in revenue from new distribution models (streaming). That's how negotiations work. But because a major aspect of a fair deal surrounds streaming, the studios won't budge on divulging those numbers. And they won't even come to the table to discuss.

The big disconnect at the studios (and for many on this thread) is that they don't place a lot of value in the role of a writer on tv/movies.

From a pure capitalist standpoint, yes, the studios can play hardball and let the writers run out of money first. But we're all going to lose from it. Content is going to dry up, completed projects will push, and the overall quality of media will suffer.

When I think of the free market, I think of the old railroad and steel days where you could lose an arm in an unsafe work environment, and they'd just fire you and replace you with the next poor immigrant that came along. Striking should never have been necessary, but those in charge would rather squeeze the laborers dry and toss them aside - so unions had to be formed and laws had to be passed.

So I don't think of this as burger-flippers wanting $100/hour and putting the poor small-business burger store out of business. I imagine it more like a sweatshop, where the workers want a little AC and the millionaire owner - who nobody sees and has never sewn a stitch in his life - instead goes to the public, saying how clothes prices are going to have to increase because he has ungrateful workers.

It's all posturing from either side - like any negotiation - but I'm going to side with the actual creators, who produce tons of content for us to enjoy rather than the fat cat studios who can afford to budge, but won't. There IS a middle ground here, they just have to find it together.

Sorry, I should've said they asked to come to the table and negotiate, but ultimately the studios went dark. The only other option was to strike.

In your estimation, they should've either just accepted the deal the studios initially presented (which was virtually nothing) or left their jobs?

And then an entire industry could eventually come crashing down (either due to poor content from AI or unqualified people, or disinterest from consumers when all content is international purchases) and we'd be left with what?

So when revenue increases from new distribution models, and the content creators say "hey it would be beneficial for us all if we created a more stable environment for these roles, and it is a small percentage of the increases you are seeing", you think it's absurd? And not only are they unwilling to share the profit, they actually want to reduce those roles because they feel they aren't all that important anymore.

I think you like to speak in absolutes, when you know this is more nuanced than that.

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It's all posturing from either side - like any negotiation - but I'm going to side with the actual creators, who produce tons of content for us to enjoy rather than the fat cat studios who can afford to budge, but won't. There IS a middle ground here, they just have to find it together.

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I'm sure there is a middle ground to be found. Siding with the actual creators is fine, but their creations can't exist without the funding opportunities these "fat cats" can provide. Unless of course the creatives simply fund their own works and get them to market.

Prophet00 said:

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Sorry, I should've said they asked to come to the table and negotiate, but ultimately the studios went dark. The only other option was to strike.

In your estimation, they should've either just accepted the deal the studios initially presented (which was virtually nothing) or left their jobs?

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Striking was always the open threat. It's naive to pretend they were "asking to come to the table and negotiate". They were really "demanding to come to the table and negotiate or we will strike." The notion that they just happened to come up with the idea of striking after the studios refused is laughable. They had signs and **** printed and ready to go.

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And then an entire industry could eventually come crashing down (either due to poor content from AI or unqualified people, or disinterest from consumers when all content is international purchases) and we'd be left with what?

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This goes to show how important this is to the studios. They are willing to risk it all crashing down over it. So maybe there is more to it than fat cats, just wanting to be a little richer?

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So when revenue increases from new distribution models, and the content creators say "hey it would be beneficial for us all if we created a more stable environment for these roles, and it is a small percentage of the increases you are seeing", you think it's absurd? And not only are they unwilling to share the profit, they actually want to reduce those roles because they feel they aren't all that important anymore.

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It's not mutually beneficial. What additional value do content creators provide by these new distribution models? Nothing. So they want money for nothing. Why should they get any part of that? If my neighbor get's a raise, should I be able to go demand he give me some? No. If I try to extort some of that money out of him and call it "mutually beneficial" then I'm the A-hole, not him.

And if studios want to reduce those roles, then that goes to show these people provide even LESS value, not more. If these content creators think the studios are wrong, then they should make their own studio and prove them wrong. Show the world how they are more valuable and produce better content than AI can. If they are right, then they will get more customers than the legacy studios.

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I think you like to speak in absolutes, when you know this is more nuanced than that.

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Nuanced, are you kidding me? You are the one making the 6th grade argument that fat cats are screwing over the poor working man just to make themselves a little richer. You clearly have not thought this through from the other side at all.