The SAG and Writers’ strike has gone over 100 days.
Most actors are out of work right now. Only a few are working on projects that got waivers from the union to continue or finish their production. These are mostly the massive projects like Beetlejuice 2. But those who go paycheck to paycheck are out of work and have been for over 100 days now. But not just the actors, but the writers as well. Both the writers and actors have common issues with the union they are in. Even the Emmys for this year got delayed due to this.
With the growing power of AI, studios are looking at making films with AI. This will save money and not have to pay real people. AI is at the point now that we could have a screenplay written for us without even breaking a sweat. One could type in a few suggestions for the AI system and boom. There is a complete screenplay done within a couple of hours.
It goes without saying, but this is a pretty big problem. We are looking at a soulless movie industry if this is the future we are looking at. With the actors, they are protesting many things. But one of the largest is how many are getting little to no money when it comes to residuals.
When an actor gets on a show or film that gets on streaming services online, if it blows up, they usually get little to no money from it. Right now the way it is set up is that they do not get much money if something they work on does well. Some have even posted the checks they got on TV shows or movies they were on, ranging from pennies to a few bucks.
Many familiar faces are showing up to show their support at these strikes and get more attention to the cause. These strikes have been going strong and are marching outside all the major film and network studios daily.
With the days flying by, it might be a while until actors begin working again as this is the longest actors strike since 2000.
