Since June, American actors belonging to the Screen Actors Guild have been on strike, asking for an increase in wages, improved payments from streaming services, and protections against the use of their likeness by artificial intelligence. Talks ended abruptly on October 11 because the studios thought the actors were making unreasonable demands, but as of November 9, the actors and the studios came to an agreement, ending this historic strike.
The terms of this agreement still need to be ratified by the union’s members before it fully takes effect. However, the union said in a statement that this deal includes significant increases to pay minimums, AI protections, and streaming participation bonus, as well as more benefits, though specific details are still unknown.
Over 160,000 actors and media professionals went on protest for this strike. Some of these actors included George Clooney, Ben Affleck, and Scarlett Johansson. Actors and crew members have gone months without working now, and their savings accounts are starting to run low. These delays caused movies such as Dune: Part Two, Kraven the Hunter, Deadpool 3 , and Ghostbusters: Afterlife Sequel to be delayed to 2024 when they were supposed to come out near the end of 2023.
A major issue the actors wanted to be resolved was streaming residuals. Actors get no streaming residuals and wanted 57 cents a year for every streaming subscriber worldwide. Studios balked at this, as streaming profits have decreased from 31% to 16% since 2013. Studios claimed the actors were asking a lot and had too high expectations, and it seems that they settled on something similar regarding residuals to what the Writers Guild of America (WGA) negotiated.
Hollywood is itching to get back to work now that this strike is over. The Hollywood strikes cost the California economy around $5 billion. Although Barbie and Oppenheimer did well at the box office, several other films bombed, and sales are still behind pre-pandemic levels and might not grow back to the height of 2018-2019.
Studios have claimed highly-rated but low-performing films like Strays, Blue Beetle, and Gran Turismo could’ve done better in box offices with a fully operational cast to promote the movies, so actors are back to promoting projects. Timothee Chalamet immediately went on late-night talk shows and interviews to promote the upcoming Wonka movie coming out December 15 in hopes it will reverse the big-budget bomb trend most recently seen with The Flash, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, The Haunted Mansion, and Indiana Jones.
