"The company now expects to exceed $1.7 billion in free cash flow for the third quarter of 2023, in part due to the strong performance of 'Barbie' as well as incremental impact from strike-related factors," the entertainment giant says in a regulatory filing.
"The company now expects to exceed $1.7 billion in free cash flow for the third quarter of 2023, in part due to the strong performance of 'Barbie' as well as incremental impact from strike-related factors," the entertainment giant says in a regulatory filing.
What these articles never talk about is the demands that actors and writers are making, and how paltry that pay raise would be in comparison to these losses.
The studios are being pennywise and pound-foolish, and pissing off the most valuable part of their industry, the talent.
how paltry that pay raise would be in comparison to these losses.
It's just the people who are striking aren't just asking for a meager raise now.
There's also stuff about stopping AI before that Black Mirror episode about AI pumping out completed shows come true.
The studios don't want to agree to stopping that, because they want it to happen.
Which means the strikers are right, and should be striking.
pissing off the most valuable part of their industry, the talent.
A decade or two from now, it might be AI writers, AI actors, and making a whole movie happens on a computer that just spits out a finished product.
That is something studios would be willing to take a half a billion hit against. And if they didn't think it was coming, they would have caved by now.
The workers only have leverage if they strike before they can be replaced, and demand a future where humans are more involved than typing in a couple prompts.
Less than a decade, I think. We won’t live to see the first completely generated movie star. We’ll live to see them become the default. We’ll live to see a time when live human acting is, in and of itself, a noteworthy occurrence.
AI isn’t even driving this forward. Square has been ringing this bell for more than a decade with its movies. AI is just making it cheap. And that fact alone is why it will continue, unabated and unhindered, come what may.
What the studios aren’t realizing is that it’s not just the end for human actors, it’s their end as well. If you can generate feature length films with effects and acting and sound, who the hell needs a major studio?
The pay raises are largely nothing burgers. Same with having a proper writers' room and the like.
The two main sticking points of the WGA/SAG strike are:
Royalties/residuals. Currently, even if talent IS eligible for them, the streaming services are set up in a way that they will never get them. This comes up near constantly with stuff like "This person wrote Stranger Witcher Tiger King and lives in a cardboard box" style stories. THIS actually would impact (some of) the companies and studios to a very large degree. Like, it wasn't Band of Brothers or Run Fatboy Run that made The Schwim rich as all hell. Same with most of the sitcom royalty who basically buy a new house every time TBS does a marathon.
AI generated content. I've said it many times before, but the only outcome that is likely will be "All past performances are not eligible to be part of training data. Talent will have the option to allow their performance/work to be added to a training data set no less than N years after the first public release"... with a lot of coercion regarding how optional that is (if you thought "Agree to show your tits or we find someone else" was a problem...). This has no real impact currently but will be MASSIVE amounts of money in N years and studios likely expect to be valued based on how much training data they will have.
"All past performances are not eligible to be part of training data. Talent will have the option to allow their performance/work to be added to a training data set no less than N years after the first public release"
And how can that ever be truly ensured/compliance confirmed?
Studios can pinky swear then somehow, oops, some third party that they totally didn't know about their practices uses the off limits material to generate AI results which are then sold to the studio.
It's unfortunate that these are the sticking points for the union, because they seem like really bad hills to die on long term.
Residuals are antiquated in the streaming world, gettingpaid up front is a far better deal. If you want recurring income, negotiate a stock grant. Residuals are chasing a shrinking pile of money competing with 40 years of content. Prestige TV makes headlines, but a big reason streamers aren't releasing numbers is because those shows are crap for engagement. Shows like Friends are still likely dominating the streaming count.
AI is coming whether you like it or not, they would be far better off negotiating a way to include AI as it advances rather than seek to ban it. The fair use argument is really strong for model builders. Actors and writers are better off working with current producers to create a path forward for AI, because a complete ban is likely to result in an outside company coming in and disrupting the market. Yes the stance producers started with is extreme on this subject matter, but the actors and writers are similarly extreme.
It would. But that would set the precedent that unions have any power and studios didn't have all of the power. Studios aren't willing to cave because they're afraid they can't completely control their workers and siphon as many profits as possible.
Shows you whose side most of these news outlets are on. Once you see it, you can't unsee the rampant, egregious anti labor bias in the news, or actually anywhere. Many people in the US have been effectively trained to hate unions and those striking. It's just mind blowing to see how many people's knee jerk reaction is siding against strikers.
Can't rely on fake news on provide quality information. They are just daddy's lap dogs shilling to us.
Workers must get educated, learn to read between the lines and act tin their own self interest and the working class.. Anything less than that, slaves aint even trying to play the game.
Capital owners only speak language of profit so that's how worker must speak to these lEAdErS.
Seriously, all the actors, writers, fx guys, directors, and so on should just form an employee owned studio at this point. Out of spite, if nothing else.
A lot of people worked very hard on the movie to make it happen, and it did well because it's a good movie made by good people, and it's wrong for WB to take the full credit for that. So, give the people what they deserve for their hard work, and the strike ends. Simple as that.
But, I'm realistic, and at this point it's clear that WB doesn't feel pressured enough to listen to reason yet. So, help us make them listen to reason, and keep supporting the strike in any way you can.
I went and saw Barbie twice. I caught the show when my fiancée was out of town, then took her out to see it when she got back. The movie works on a lot of levels and I thought it was well done. Great writing, great cast.
Humans are good at compartmentalizing. The same father that shouts at a ref over a bad call in a tee ball game will happily support industries that will give his child cancer as long as he doesn't have to think too hard about it.
Profit is amoral. If we want a fair and just society, we must ignore profit motives and accept the cost of being civilized. The capitalist will demonize unions and taxes and regulation, because those things cost the capitalist profit. And the capitalist is right, those things are the enemy.
Unfortunately, the capitalist has also convinced everyone else that we're supposed to be on his side. The capitalist is not on our side.
Are there any non-union production studios/companies out there? You'd think a strike like this would be a massive opportunity for studios and talent that otherwise wouldn't have access to theaters or be drowned out with all the other new releases.