Los Angeles — Hollywood scribes met with studio executives Friday for the primary time for the reason that Author’s Guild of America went on strike simply over three months in the past.
The greater than 11,000 movie and tv writers that make up the WGA have been on strike since early Could. In mid-July, they have been joined on the picket traces by the roughly 65,000 actors within the Display Actors Guild–American Federation of Tv and Radio Artists, SAG-AFTRA, a transfer that has shuttered almost all scripted Hollywood manufacturing.
It marks the primary time since 1960 that each guilds have been on strike concurrently. The financial affect has been particularly heightened in California, the place movie and tv manufacturing accounts for greater than 700,000 jobs and almost $70 billion a yr in wages, in line with the California Movie Fee.
“We’re actually combating for the rights of the people who find themselves working and dwelling within the metropolis,” Burbank Mayor Konstantine Anthony advised CBS Information. “And that is actually who I symbolize. I did not get voted in by studios.”
Anthony can also be an actor together with being mayor of Burbank, which is dwelling to a number of studios, together with Disney and Warner Bros.
“If folks aren’t coming to work, if individuals are on strike, they don’t seem to be spending cash at their native grocery retailer,” Anthony stated. “All of these secondary industries are significantly affected by the lack of that earnings.”
That features Alex Uceda’s catering firm, which feeds Hollywood manufacturing crews.
“On the finish of final yr, we have been working like 10, 11 jobs day by day,” Uceda stated. “It drops to possibly one or two jobs now.”
Uceda, who estimates he has misplaced about 70% of his enterprise in that point, has needed to lay off almost half his staff for the reason that WGA strike started.
A number of huge stars — together with the likes of Oprah, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson — have every made donations of $1 million or extra to the SAG-AFTRA’s monetary help program.
“I urge all of the folks from the studio, please, please make it occur, you recognize, for the great of everybody,” Uceda stated.
Each the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are negotiating individually with the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers, the group that represents all the main Hollywood studios. Among the many most hotly-contested points for each teams are residuals from streaming providers and the usage of synthetic intelligence.
Earlier this week, the WGA knowledgeable its members that Carol Lombardini, AMPTP president, had reached out and “requested” Friday’s assembly “to debate negotiations.”
“I believe it is hopeful, as a result of it has been crickets, it has been silent for a very long time,” SAG-AFTRA member Chad Coe advised CBS Information of Friday’s assembly.
Paramount Photos, one of many studios concerned within the negotiations, and CBS Information are each a part of Paramount International. Some CBS Information employees are SAG-AFTRA or Writers Guild members, however their contracts are usually not affected by the strikes.
