I am skeptical this strike will come to much, though I wouldn’t complain at being proven wrong. The last big writer’s strike I remember was in 2008ish, and that strike killed off a lot of shows and (anecdotally, at least) resulted in a large uptick in what we foolishly refer to as “reality TV”.
I would not be surprised even a little if I were to discover that this strike has caused executives and producers to turn to AI-generated content right now, as opposed to sometime down the line. The first “written by AI” show is bound to get a lot of initial attention, and as with all things dealing with automation-- it doesn’t have to be perfect, just better than humans.
The pessimist/pragmatist in me agrees with you, that this strike probably won’t come to any real meaningful changes.
However, the one big difference now is, actors and writers today have been earning such paltry amounts that almost all of them have full-time side hustles, so nobody is going hungry. I have a lot of friends who work as actors and writers in LA, and even if they do that “full-time” they all have full-time side careers too, as the pay for acting/writing is so crazy low and LA’s COL is so high. So if the studios hope to wait it out until people lose their houses and can’t afford food, they may be waiting a long time.
The ones hurting the most in LA are the mid-level and senior producers, who earn a good 6 figures, but not millions. They don’t have side hustles, and they have mortgages on million dollar homes, and also no income coming in. And they’re on the studios’ side, so they may actually be the first to fall before anyone from WGA/SAG.
I know I’m being a debbie downer, and my mostly-off topic follow up question is going to be in the same vein: Are you implying that these actors with second jobs can pay all their bills with only their second jobs? Does acting really pay so little; that’s nearly “hobby” territory.
There’s a pretty wide gap between A/B listers that are household names making a guaranteed 7+ figures per role and people that fight for every small role they can get, often going weeks between roles, and often only earning SAG minimums.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to give the impression that I thought all actors were the mega-rich ones; only that if acting pays so little, it’s the second job, if you ask me.
If Iger thought his attempt to exec-splain the situation would make actors think twice about walking out, he was very much mistaken. Instead, he handed SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher the perfect opportunity for the kind of speech usually shouted atop the barricades.
“Execsplain” has become my new favorite word in this brave new era of CEOs proving the need for guillotines and machetes; and I plan to incorporate it into my diction post-motherfuckin-haste.
