The Actors Strike! What Do They Want?
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This week, Sonny Bunch (The Bulwark), Alyssa Rosenberg (The Washington Post), and Peter Suderman (Reason) try to figure out why the studios and the actors are so far apart in their negotiations. Spoiler: It’s not entirely about the money. (Though it is, in a larger sense, always about the money.) Then they review Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning: Part One, the latest entry in Tom Cruise’s decades-spanning series. Make sure to swing by Bulwark+ for Friday’s episode on Cruise, his evolving career, and how he managed to get the focus off of his personal life over the last decade. And if you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend!
The Actors Strike! What Do They Want?
Agreed that it’s a battle about who gets to decide who makes money -- but my sympathies are with the working actors, writers, techs & craftspeople. The VC investors and their employees will be fine, more or less. No-one’s sending them negative-dollar residuals for shows they helped make hits.
I've watched my residuals collapse in the last 5 years - they were robust the first 12 years of my career - those payments are how writers plan/ survive/ raise a family/ pay a mortgage/ have a career. That is the foundation on which we can go get other jobs. Netflix acts like it's paying more upfront in lieu of residuals - but the time to develop with them draaaaaags so long/ has no end date - you end up making way less. It's just not sustainable. The companies should def be getting a cut of everything fed into AI - and thus the creators getting a piece of that cut. That's one revenue stream to be fought for. But really -- I don't see how this business model works long term. Sad if America surrenders its pop culture/ soft power dominance.