The battle between the film studios and the Screen Actors Guild of the United States (SAG-AFTRA) is the thorniest conflict in recent decades in Hollywood, a total disagreement that, if prolonged, could cause internal divisions on both sides, warn experts consulted by EFE.
The union of interpreters began an indefinite strike last Thursday after failing to reach an agreement for a new collective agreement with the Alliance of Film and Television Producers (AMPTP), which includes media conglomerates, television networks and streaming platforms. .
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) on the actors’ own image and what is known as “residuals”, the compensation that artists receive each time a “streaming” service sells the rights of a production to a new market, are the points that, according to both groups, generate more friction.
However, according to most specialists, this is just the tip of the iceberg of a change in the entertainment industry, which increasingly has more intermediaries and where billing, in many cases, has been reduced.
“It is unlikely that movie theaters will return to the levels of the 2000s. This means that movies are less talked about and there is less demand,” summarizes Mark Young, an entertainment specialist and professor at the School of Marshall Business (University of Southern California).
A context fed back, as Young explains to EFE, by a “drop in the average quality of movies” and by an audience that sees “social networks or other types of live events” as alternatives to series or movies.
Thus, the experts agree that this has translated into a worsening of conditions both for large studios and for the actors themselves who, depending on the duration of the strikes, could experience splits within their ranks if they are not able to financially support this cessation of activities.
“There is the possibility that some companies separate and reach their own agreements. For example, televisions have more at stake during the autumn season than technological ones,” Christine Becker, a professor at the Department of Film and Television at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA).
In fact, while spokespersons for platforms such as Netflix have conveyed a message of reassurance to their users, assuring that many of their seasons have already been recorded and will be able to supply their catalog in the coming months, representatives of chains such as CNN have warned of the enormous impact that the strike would have. .
“Those companies that are listed on Wall Street are likely taking advantage of this to make further cuts,” Becker outlined, mindful of the different realities for companies under the AMPTP umbrella.
Academics also expect the passing weeks to deepen historic divisions within SAG-AFTRA, where improving conditions for “A” stars – the highest-paid figures in the industry – has not always brought a greater well-being of secondary actors, television or extras, among others.
The draft that AMPTP presented to the union in recent weeks included a 58% improvement in the minimum salary for leading actors, but as a counterpart, it contemplated the acquisition of the image rights of the extras, so they would only work for one day of filming and could then be replicated by AI.
The president of SAG-AFTRA, Fran Drescher, tries to maintain the balance to satisfy the demands of those 160,000 interpreters whom she represents, all of them with different claims, areas of expertise and even airs.
Likewise, next year the collective agreement such as the presenters of contests and reality television programs, linked to SAG-AFTRA, also expires, so, according to experts, Drescher “will have to cut a fine line” with the companies so as not to burn all their bullets with the current negotiation.
The distance between the parties and the diversity in the demands within the actors themselves and entertainment companies augur that the strikes will last at least until October, chaining three months of pickets, as happened in 2007 with the scriptwriters union.
Although it was not reported by the media, it is ‘vox populi’ that that strike was resolved, including executive directors of the main film studios at the negotiating table. Something that, for specialists, has few signs of being repeated due to the lack of a reference personality for both sides.