Former Hollywood Executive Believes Industry Could Collapse If SAG and WGA Strikes Continue
By Movieguide® Contributor
Barry Diller, former Paramount and 20th Century Fox CEO, believes the current SAG and WGA strikes need to be resolved by September 1, otherwise, the industry will face an “absolute collapse.”
“What will happen is, if in fact, it doesn’t get settled until Christmas or so, then next year, there’s not going to be many programs for anybody to watch,” Diller explained. “So, you’re gonna see subscriptions get pulled, which is going to reduce the revenue of all these movie companies [and] television companies, the result of which is that there will be no programs.”
“And at just the time [the] strike is settled [and] you want to get back up, there won’t be enough money,” he warned.
The Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) went on the strike at the beginning of May due to low salaries and concerns over A.I. in the writer’s room. After more than two months, the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) joined the strike, citing similar reasons.
Without writers or actors, nearly every television and movie production have been forced to come to a halt, setting the stage for a barren content future if negotiations are not quickly resolved.
“The companies have refused to meaningfully engage on some topics and on others completely stonewalled us,” SAG President, Fran Drescher said. “Until they do negotiate in good faith, we cannot begin to reach a deal.”
To help resolve salary issues, Diller believes pay cuts need to be taken boy those at the top – on both sides of the picket line.
“You have the actors union, saying, “How dare these 10 people who run these companies earn all this money and won’t pay us?’ While if you look at it on the other side, the top ten actors get paid more than the top ten executives. I’m not saying either is right. Actually, everybody’s probably overpaid at the top end,” he said.
“The one idea I had is to say, as a good faith measure, both the executives and the most paid actors should take a 25% pay cut, to try and narrow the difference between those who get highly paid and those who don’t,” Diller continued.
As for A.I., Diller believes that the actors and writers are overestimating the impact that the technology will have on their work.
“In this case, I think [in] the one to three year period, not much is going to happen. But post that, of course, there are all these issues,” Diller said about A.I. “Now by the way these issues are not, I believe, related to some of the worries about replacement.”
“I do not think [the studios] are going to replace A.I. generated actors. I don’t think you’re going to replace writers,” he continued. “Yes, you can adjust all this stuff and spit out something that sounds like Shakespeare, but guess what, it is not original Shakespeare. And writers will get assisted, not replaces. Most of these actual performing crafts, I don’t think they’re in danger of artificial intelligence.”
Movieguide® previously reported on the SAG strike:
“When employers make … greed their priority, they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run. We have a problem,” she added.
Drescher also noted the weight of a strike, and how that impacts not only thousands of workers in the entertainment industry, but laborers around the world.
“I went in, in earnest, thinking that we would be able to avert a strike. The gravity of this move is not lost on me, our negotiating committee, or our board members, who have voted unanimously to proceed with a strike,” she said.
With the rise in popularity of streaming, AI and other new technologies, Hollywood’s old model of contracts with their talent are leaving many workers unfairly compensated, Drescher claimed.
“The entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, AI. That is a moment of truth. If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble,” she said. “We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines ….”
“You share the wealth, because you cannot exist without us,” she finished.
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