On Thursday, months after the Writers Guild of America went on strike in May, Hollywood’s actors union, SAG-AFTRA, announced that its members will join screenwriters on the picket line.
SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher did not mince words as she made the announcement Thursday.
“We are the victims here,” Drescher said. “We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us. ... How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when they’re giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.”
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The decision marks both a crucial turning point in the WGA strike and a historic marker; the two unions haven’t been on strike together since 1960. But what does this mean for Hollywood going forward? Here’s a quick primer to get you up to speed.
Which unions in Hollywood are striking?
The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since May.
In June, the Directors Guild of America struck a deal with the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers), which represents the major studios—precluding a strike from Hollywood’s directors. SAG-AFTRA announced it would join the fight Thursday, and the union will walk out at midnight.
Why are the WGA and SAG-AFTRA striking?
Lots of reasons, but the gist is that changes in the industry (namely, streaming and a growing amount of corporate mergers) have slowly chipped away at residuals and other pay structures. Los Angeles is the fourth-most expensive city to live in the world, and according to the WGA, more writers are making the guild-negotiated minimum now than were a decade ago—including 49 percent of showrunners.
Both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA are demanding higher residual payments from streamers, which typically don’t disclose viewership data.
Concerns about AI have also become central to both guilds’ negotiations; artificial intelligence can pilfer work opportunities from actual, living humans, and SAG-AFTRA claims that studios have proposed that background actors sign away their likenesses in exchange for one day’s pay. (Yes, like in a Black Mirror episode.)
Does the DGA deal mean anything for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA now?
In 2008, the Directors Guild made a deal with studios that helped rush that year’s writers strike to a close. This time around, even before the DGA announced its deal, the WGA reportedly made clear to its membership that the directors’ pact would not affect their strike.
Things were looking muddier before SAG-AFTRA joined the ranks. With actors on board, writers will have more clout to fight studios. Back in May, Steven Ross, professor of history at the University of Southern California and author of Working-Class Hollywood, told The Daily Beast that with only writers striking, “the studios can make any movie that they have a script for… But what if those actors say, ‘No, we’re not going to show up’? Then everything shuts down.”
So, this could be over quickly?
Not necessarily. The last writers strike stretched for 100 days from 2007 to 2008. The last time writers and actors struck in tandem was in 1960; writers struck for almost five months beginning that January, while actors joined in March and struck for a little over a month. The last time actors went on strike, they were out for 94 days.
Earlier this week, Deadline spoke with anonymous studio executives who claimed that a plan is in place to stall the WGA negotiations until the fall, after writers will have presumably burned through their savings. (A representative for the organization refuted the report after it went viral on Twitter.)
All of this to say, it’s perhaps not safe to bet on seeing new episodes of Riverdale anytime soon.
Why aren’t the studios budging?
They seem to believe they’ve done enough already.
The AMPTP’s statement about the SAG-AFTRA strike on Thursday claims the organization 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.” (That “groundbreaking” AI proposal would be the aforementioned suggestion that background actors sell off their likenesses forever.)
And as Disney CEO Bob Iger recently put it in an interview that immediately got him scorched on Twitter, Hollywood “is and has been a great business for all of these people, and it will continue to be, even through disruptive times. But being realistic is imperative here.”
How much does that guy make again?
I’m so glad you asked! He just signed a contract extension that brings his annual take-home to $31 million, assuming he gets all his bonuses.
I’m sorry, what?
To be honest, his salary is kind of embarrassingly low compared to some of the other guys. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav made $498,915,318 in the past five years, according to the Los Angeles Times; poor Iger only got to $195,092,460.
Ted Sarandos, meanwhile, reportedly took home $192,171,581 from Netflix in the past half-decade, and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts got $170,158,088.
Didn’t all of these companies have layoffs over the past few years? Did I imagine that?
Sadly, you did not. Warner Bros. actually announced earlier this year that they expected more layoffs to come. Last May, Netflix purged an entire editorial division it had created only months before by poaching writers—many of them women and people of color—from steady jobs. The company laid off hundreds of employees that summer. Layoffs also hit NBCUniversal earlier this year as its owner, Comcast, sought to cut $1 billion in costs.
Wow. Is there anything the striking workers are asking the public to do?
They’ve suggested a couple things, actually!
Adam Conover, creator of Adam Ruins Everything and WGA negotiating committee member, has suggested that allies donate to the Entertainment Community Fund to support film and TV workers affected by the strike.
Meanwhile, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit showrunner Warren Leight suggests cancelling your streaming subscription with a note: “Until you pay your actors and writers, we won’t pay you.”
Beyond donations and boycotting, you can also always post on social media—or even show up to a protest in person.
