Hollywood Picket Lines Swell With Addition Of SAG-AFTRA Members
Image Source: BBC
Actors have officially joined writers in solidarity on the picket lines in Hollywood. The BBC reports that thousands of actors showed up yesterday, marching and holding signs next to their wordsmithing counterparts. It is noteworthy that there has not been a collaborative strike of this magnitude in Hollywood in over sixty years. The last united strike in the entertainment industry occurred in 1960. The actors went on a ten-week strike in 1980. Fast forward forty-three years to 2023. The Writer’s Guild of America voted to withdraw their labor efforts in early May.
With SAG-AFTRA joining the cause, about 160,000 performers stopped work at midnight and joined the 11,500 members of the WGA on the line. Why are they on strike? The answer is fair wages, safe working conditions, and the need for protective practices about the use of artificial intelligence programs in the industry. Susan Sarandon discussed from the NYC picket line concerns regarding the use of technological advances in AI without establishing policies for their use ahead of time. “AI will affect everybody. There's definitely always been the feeling that if it isn't solved now, how do we ever solve it in the future? “If you don't have the foresight to put something in place for the future, then you're screwed. It's clear that nothing is going to change from the top down, it's going to be up to us at the bottom.”
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Image Source: CBS News
Fans of television and film may wonder what all this means. Filming will come to a halt as actors won’t be available to appear in films or promote work that they have already done. This was seen just this week when the stars of the upcoming summer blockbuster, Oppenheimer walked out of the premier. Current films in production such as Avatar, Gladiator, and Deadpool, as well as popular television series including Stranger Things, Family Guy, and The Simpsons will likely be put on hold. In terms of appearances – red-carpet premieres, interviews, and other special events such as the Emmy Awards and Comic-Con have either been canceled, rescheduled, or scaled back.
Actor, Brian Cox of the HBO series, Succession shared some of his concerns with the BBC about the growth of streaming services, “The whole streaming thing has shifted the paradigm. They are trying to freeze us out and beat us into the ground because there's a lot of money to be made in streaming and the desire is not to share it with the writers or the performers." SAG president, Fran Drescher said, “We are being victimized by a very greedy entity. I am shocked by the way the people that we have been in business with are treating us.” When the strike will end is unknown at this point. Cox estimated to the BBC that it can last as long as the end of the year.
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Source: BBC
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