When we talked about the writers’ strike, there were more than a few of us who noticed that it was just the beginning of the tornado that can take the current ecosystem of Hollywood ahead: After the scriptwriters, the next to renegotiate the clauses are the actors and, later, the directors. In other words: you can shoot without writers on the set (even if you get a churro), but without actors and directors it is more complicated. For now, at least.
Each SAGbio with its theme
Before beginning to negotiate, the union of actors (SAG-AFTRA) has sent to each member the corresponding permission to put the strike on the table. In other words, have more pressure measurements. On June 7 they will begin to negotiate with the studios with the idea of, if an agreement has not been reached by the 30th (something that seems increasingly likely), to start a strike and thus join the WGA. From what is said, The actors have never been so united, and it is the first time that an absolute general strike seems feasible.
There are 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA and everything seems to indicate that they will have more than enough majority to incite a strike in case negotiations go wrong. Fran Drescher, the president (better known as ‘The Nanny’) has said: “The idea of a strike is not the first option, but the last resort. As my father used to say, ‘Better to have and not need than to need and not have!’“. However, in Los Angeles they don’t talk about anything else.
In the search to live from his work at a time when it is increasingly complicated, actors have similar demands to screenwriters: in an environment with shorter seasons and longer hiatuses and with the AI blowing down the neck, the idea is to achieve financial equality and that the idea of the “actor waiter” is lost by increasing residual payments (when a series or movie is broadcast or projected beyond what is indicated by contract) and changing the culture of recorded casting for oneself that became fashionable in the pandemic and has not abated. To sum it up in one sentence: curves are coming.
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