I’ve enjoyed some is Stephen Amell’s performances, but his take on the strike is incredibly disappointing. Myopic? A reductive tactic? If he’s got a better way in mind, he should share or have been on the committee. We all know the studios are not negotiating. Their plans to essentially starve all their creative talent to make them desperate enough to take just anything has been exposed. What does Amell think they can do better?
I want to sympathize with him because he’s got a little known show whose new season was delayed until just now. He can’t promote it under strike rules (and I think he might have already screwed that up by posting a billboard on his socials). But he gets no sympathy from me because this is clearly bigger than his show right now, and it will impact – ideally for the better – everyone he works with and will work with. Talk about myopic…
I watched a bit of the US open on Amazon. Tennis was supposed to be a flagship sport for them. The subtitles kept on referring to the players tennis “brackets”, and talked about a one “veinous Williams””.
Awful awful stuff. I don’t even try to have automatic subtitles for my accent, I get that it’s a bit niche for our overlords, but these were not so much and surely some contextual knowledge would be necessary?
His take seems really naive and superficial. The only studio mentioned is Netflix. He says their subscribers have gone up recently because of password crackdowns and they would love a 2 year strike. The password crackdown is a one-time thing. It won’t get them subscribers over the next year. What’s their plan? No new content? International content? They’ve already found licensing content isn’t viable and they have to make their own.
The studios that aren’t primarily streaming are trying to get back to box office revenues. It’s obvious that’s not possible for a year after the strike ends. He mentions late-night shows not being viable on the terms they’re asking for. Late night writer is a coveted, stable gig. I’m not sure how any of the asks on the table would seriously affect them (and Netflix doesn’t have any).
A24 and many indie productions have already signed contracts on the terms WGA/SAG are asking and are writing and shooting content right now.
AMPTP is already working on damage control. They’re hiring a PR firm to help the narrative they need moving forward. This is either to gain the trust of the public now against those striking or to gain the trust of the people after they negotiate terms. It’s unclear what they need at this point. It’s only clear that the public in general is siding with the picket line right now and there’s a potential 15% loss in revenue at the box office due to not having the actors involved in promoting movies.
I’ve also seen multiple articles saying that investors are losing confidence over the studios handling of this.
I wonder if a PR firm for the AMPTP is self serving? A major sticking point is that the studios use the AMPTP as a shield and unions want to negotiate more directly.
Good points. It’s probably all of those things. But all of them lead to saving face because the optics are rightly terrible. Even prior to the strike things looked bad thanks to the content cutting they were doing on major yet still nascent streaming platforms and the public outcry from creators about the impact it had on them. Whoever they hire for PR seriously have their work cut out for them. And I hope they fail at the attempt to save face.
The studios tried bare minimum negotiations with what may have been a prepared statement when their terms were not met. All of this will hopefully continue to scrape away any positive, supportive feelings people might have for the people who continue to make boatloads of money while the strike continues.
