The United States film industry may be paralyzed by the strike that Hollywood actors are preparing to start this Friday after the breakdown of negotiations with the studios at the end of the deadline last night that the parties had given themselves to try to reach an agreement .
If the more than 160,000 summoned to the mobilization ratify the measure in the vote scheduled for this Thursday, it will be the first actors’ strike in the US since 1980 and the first joint one with the scriptwriters -already unemployed for two months- since 1960.
Like the writers, the performers represented by the Screen Actors Union and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-Aftra) demand salary improvements from the industry in their agreement, a new distribution of “residual” profits ” for image rights in contracts with streaming platforms and a regulation of the use of Artificial Intelligence that protects employment.
The actors and actresses are also calling for a reconsideration of self-recorded auditions, a procedure promoted by companies during the pandemic that has caused a drastic cut in live casting sessions.
“You have to make at least $26,000 a year to get health insurance, and there are a lot of people who only cross that threshold through their residual payments,” actor Matt Damon said Wednesday during a promotional event for the movie Oppenheimer. “Money is being made and it needs to be allocated in a way that cares for the people who are now on the sidelines,” he added.
In the most substantial, it is a question of avoiding the definitive bankruptcy of the interpreters who now live on the threshold of precariousness and of protecting those who make up the so-called “middle class” of actors.
The SAG-Aftra union spent four weeks – until midnight on Wednesday – negotiating with the Alliance of Film and Television Producers (Amptp), an entity that represents the main Hollywood studios and broadcasters, including Amazon, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony or Warner Bros. Discovery.
The strike by some 11,500 writers since May 3 has forced studios to restock their late-night television talk shows, a staple of American information and entertainment, to boredom. That, in addition to having interrupted most of the production of the fall television season, as well as the development of not a few high-budget films.
Now, the probable strike of the actors would shut down the remaining Hollywood productions. After the crisis caused by the pandemic, the sector could suffer a collapse from which it would take time to recover…, unless the parties reached an agreement in a reasonable time.
