Barry Diller: Actor/Writer Strikes Could Lead to Hollywood’s ‘Absolute Collapse

[Not A Serious Person]

This is the first SAG-AFTRA strike in about 40 years, and the first time both actors and writers have been on strike together since 1960.

Guild leaders described the crossroads as an existential one that many industries face. Namely, will technology eclipse human contribution?

When businesses look to Wall Street for answers instead of their creative collaborators, that answer has become yes, according to Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA President and co-chief negotiator.

“The eyes of labor are upon us. What happens here is important, because it’s happening across all fields of labor,” said Ms. Drescher at a press conference after the vote.

“I went in in earnest, thinking we could avoid a strike,” she said. “The gravity of this move is not lost on me.”

“The entire business model has been changed by streaming, digital, AI—this is a moment of history, and a moment of truth. If we don’t stand tall right now we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business, who cares more about Wall Street than you and your family,” she said.

The big issues on the table had been streaming residuals and AI on top of the regular negotiations on minimum increases.

AMPTP released its own statement after the actors’ announcement of a strike, claiming studios presented “a deal that offered historic pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, audition protections, shortened series option periods, and a groundbreaking AI proposal.”
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Barry Diller Delivers Doomsday Forecast: Actor and Writer Strikes Could Lead to Hollywood’s ‘Absolute Collapse’
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/media-titan-barry-diller-delivers-doomsday-forecast-for-hollywood-actor-and-writer-strikes-could-lead-to-the-absolute-collapse-of-an-entire-industry/

Media titan Barry Diller delivered a devastating forecast for Hollywood, if the writers and actors’ strikes are not resolved soon.

Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday, Diller — the head of the media conglomerate IAC, who previously served as CEO for Paramount and 20th Century Fox — weighed in on the state of the industry amid the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes. Diller called the current challenges facing the industry a “perfect storm.”

“You had Covid, which sent people home to watch streaming television and killed theaters,” Diller said. “You’ve had the results of huge investments in streaming which have produced all these losses for all these companies that are now kind of retrenching. So at this moment, it’s kind of a perfect storm.”

Diller called for a settlement deadline of September 1, and said there could be catastrophic ramifications if the strikes extend into the fall.

“Who cares about Hollywood?” Diller said — referencing what he believes to be overriding public sentiment on the issue. “Who cares about it? But the truth is, this is a huge business! Both domestically and for world exporters. … But these conditions will potentially produce an absolute collapse of an entire industry.”

The IAC chief acknowledged the “existential issues” at play, and said there is “no trust between the parties” — which could prolong the strikes.

Amid criticism of Disney CEO Bob Iger calling the demands from actors and writers “disturbing,” Diller argued that the top actors and the top executives are all disproportionately compensated and floated an out-of-the-box proposal designed to ease tensions between the two sides.

“Everybody’s probably overpaid at the top end,” Diller said. “The one idea I had is to say, as a good faith measure, both the executives and the most-paid actors should take a 25 percent pay cut to try and narrow the difference between those who get highly paid and those that don’t.”

[jficke13]

100% support both writer and actors on their strike. This is an existential issue for both professions (excluding the absolute top tier people). And, frankly, both strikes are desperately trying to save the executives from chasing short term profits/numbers/trends at the what would end up absolutely destroying them in the long term.

[tower912]

Yes.

[Not A Serious Person]

100% support both writer and actors on their strike. This is an existential issue for both professions (excluding the absolute top tier people). And, frankly, both strikes are desperately trying to save the executives from chasing short term profits/numbers/trends at the what would end up absolutely destroying them in the long term.

But is it a strike in vain? 

New technologies like streaming are now crushing Hollywood and AI will soon add to this. Is massive disruption to Hollywood's current business model inevitable?  This strike cannot stop the progress of technological evolution.

Why should Hollywood be any different than newspapers or taxis?

Diller is correct that this strike is risking the collapse of Hollywood (which means movies and TV shows continue to get made at the current breakneck pace. But the creation, writing, and distribution of these properties moves away from the traditional channels in LA to a far more distributed network. The costs and payments of these properties go way down. See what has happened to the music industry over the last 20 or so years).

[Not A Serious Person]

The problem is that dozens of streaming services are charging from $5/month to $30 monthly. The costs must come down so they can charge $1 to $3/month and stay in business.

We are not going back to the theatre or the big three TV networks (ABC/NBC/CBS) as our primary sources of entertainment. Those eras are over. And their business model, designed to sell shows to ABC/NBC/CBS and tickets in theatres, has to change radically. And with those changes, Hollywood will get a lot less money in the future.

----------------

Hollywood Faces a Perfect Storm. Why Netflix Could Still Win.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/actors-strike-hollywood-netflix-stock-2309d9da?mod=hp_LEAD_2

Hollywood’s actors and writers, the first time both groups have hit the picket lines at the same time since 1960, when Ronald Reagan was head of the Screen Actors Guild. Both groups are focused not just on improved pay but on how streaming is changing the entertainment business.

Meanwhile, TV and film production companies are grappling with the unraveling of cable and satellite TV—this year, the number of U.S. households subscribing to those services is likely to drop below 50% for the first time in decades, and the trend is accelerating.

Here’s how dramatically the TV world is changing: This past week Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC that the traditional linear TV business—like its ABC broadcast unit—“may not be core” to Disney’s (ticker: DIS) future. Meanwhile, FAST channels—free ad-supported linear channels—are taking a growing slice of TV ad dollars, posing a new challenge for subscription-based services.

[jficke13]

But is it a strike in vain? 

New technologies like streaming are now crushing Hollywood and AI will soon add to this. Is massive disruption to Hollywood's current business model inevitable?  This strike cannot stop the progress of technological evolution.

Why should Hollywood be any different than newspapers or taxis?

Diller is correct that this strike is risking the collapse of Hollywood (which means movies and TV shows continue to get made at the current breakneck pace. But the creation, writing, and distribution of these properties movies away from the traditional channels in LA to a far more distributed network. The costs and payments if these properties go way down. See what has happened to the music industry over the last 20 or so years).

Maybe, but here's the deal, if you are given the choice of a 100% fatal wound, or a wound with a 1% survival rate, you take the latter every time. (Honestly, I don't think these odds apply to this situation as I explain at the very end of this post).

Hollywood (and this word is being used here interchangeably re both studios and streaming platforms because for all intents and purposes they are intertwined to the point of having unified interests against labor in this situation) chose to chase Netlflix into an over-the-top streaming distribution model and killed the nearly foolproof profit machine that was the cable distribution model. That's dead and buried and probably never coming back.

The last writers' strike was not long ago. Central to there being a strike now is how the prior strike was resolved with separate carve outs for digitally-distributed properties. Now that everything is, effectively, digitally-distributed, the "eh, it's not that important it's just for Lost promos and Comedy Central Shorts so let's not sweat taking a pay cut on it" position has come be revealed as a bleeding wound in the guild. They remember this, and they need to correct it... but not in the way that you think.

Right now the "eh, it's not that important so let's not sweat it" issue is how studios want to use "AI." They see ChatGPT as a mechanism they can use to "write" scripts that they then hand off to writers to "edit," and thus cut their involvement and rate down to the bone. Hollywood/the studios think this because they're fools. Generative AI tools cannot, full stop, do a writers job (I know this, because I've used those tools, and I am a writer, and whatever you think the exponential improvement curve on them is you're wrong, the asymptote is well before "can write a movie, tv series arc, or novel."). But writers remember how giving in on something that seemingly didn't pose a threat to them was exploited to their severe detriment from the online distribution negotiation of the last strike, and this time they know that if they give in on this the profession dies.

The Actors face a similar issue. Already rank and file are having their likenesses scanned for use in generative AI productions, being paid one day's union rate, and forced to sign away the rights to the AI-generated likeness in perpetuity. It does not take a genius to see how they would treat that as an extinction-level threat.

I just hope the big dogs have steel in their spines and the willingness to prop up the fight, because this is it.

(side note, not handicapping, but the execs are out there saying they have to break the strike in public and they just have to hold out a few months before people start losing homes/apartments before the unions fold, but it cuts the other way too but maybe on another quarter or 6 month lag. Right now the stuff that's coming out has been in the can for 3-6 months, e.g. Good Omens Season 2 was turned in 6ish months ago. But if this thing stretches on long enough there won't be "new" programming that can come out... and it only takes a quarterly report or two in the toilet before heads start to roll in the C-Suite)

[Herman Cain]

Technology has changed the nature of work since the invention of the wheel.

Actors are now concerned because it is hitting them with the potential of AI. So they are fighting hard.

The reality is there are plenty of people who have talent and want to be Actors, part of Hollywood etc So this dispute will get settled .

[jficke13]

Technology has changed the nature of work since the invention of the wheel.

Actors are now concerned because it is hitting them with the potential of AI. So they are fighting hard.

The reality is there are plenty of people who have talent and want to be Actors, part of Hollywood etc So this dispute will get settled .

Again, maybe.

Not sure about SAG, but if you scab during a strike and provide *any* writing services, the writers guilds will blacklist you for life. Wouldn't suprise me in the least if SAG did the same. And while there might be some handful of people that think it'd be a lark to be in a movie, take the bag, and never act again because they never really wanted to be a professional actor so getting blacklisted won't harm them... those people are probably not replacing Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lawrence, et al.

[Not A Serious Person]

AI could make movies better says Hollywood star as thousands of actors stage walk-out

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/news/ai-could-make-movies-better-30481080

British actor Simon Pegg believes the threat of being replaced by robots could potentially spur on those in Hollywood to raise their standards. His comments come amidst the biggest actors’ strike in decades
---
Artificial Intelligence could make movies better, according to actor Simon Pegg.

The Mission: Impossible star believes the threat of being replaced by robots could spur on humans across Hollywood to raise their standards.

But Pegg, 53, said: “It might be a good thing in that it will stop us from being mediocre. There is a lot of mediocrity out there sometimes. So if it ups our game because we want to escape the velocity of this creeping threat then it’s a good thing.”

The use of AI has prompted the biggest actors’ strike in decades with A-list stars joining writers and extras in protests.

Thelma & Louise star Susan Sarandon, 76, who joined picket lines in New York last week, said AI-generated productions were bad for the industry.

She said: “I think it’s important to present human beings to human beings. I don’t know how people want to see a product that is soulless like that.

"If you could take my face, my body and my voice and make me say and do something I have no choice about it’s not a good thing.’’

Around 160,000 actors have gone on strike over pay and fears they may be replaced by digital replicas.

The Screen Actors Guild wants guarantees from studios and film makers that AI and computer generated faces and voices will not be used to replace them.

[mu_hilltopper]

Generative AI tools cannot, full stop, do a writers job ..

Disagree, mostly.   First .. AI is getting better every second.  ChatGPT was released to the public 8 months ago.  In 12, 24, 36 months, it and all the other LLMs are getting exponentially better.

Second .. There are ~1400 movies and ~500 TV series (times 8-12-20 episodes) are written/produced each year.  90% of them are absolutely mediocre-to-awful and few would notice if they were written by AI, they are total schlock.

I grant you, a chunk of entertainment benefits greatly by being written by eloquent humans. 

I think the writers/actors, long term, will be some of the first casualties in the AI era.

[tower912]

Hallmark movies could be written by AI.

[Not A Serious Person]

Disagree, mostly.   First .. AI is getting better every second.  ChatGPT was released to the public 8 months ago.  In 12, 24, 36 months, it and all the other LLMs are getting exponentially better.

Second .. There are ~1400 movies and ~500 TV series (times 8-12-20 episodes) are written/produced each year.  90% of them are absolutely mediocre-to-awful and few would notice if they were written by AI, they are total schlock.

I grant you, a chunk of entertainment benefits greatly by being written by eloquent humans. 

I think the writers/actors, long term, will be some of the first casualties in the AI era.

What about AI actors?

Isn't this just a fancy way of saying animation is about to see serious adoption?

The entertainment form that generates the most amount of revenue globally is gaming. More than all sports leagues, TV and radio advertising combined. Isn't that nothing but animation? Thus showing the art form is already very popular meaning audiences will not have a problem adopting it?

[muwarrior69]

100% support both writer and actors on their strike. This is an existential issue for both professions (excluding the absolute top tier people). And, frankly, both strikes are desperately trying to save the executives from chasing short term profits/numbers/trends at the what would end up absolutely destroying them in the long term.

All the top tier people are dead and that is who they are afraid of with the advent of AI.

[jficke13]

Disagree, mostly.   First .. AI is getting better every second.  ChatGPT was released to the public 8 months ago.  In 12, 24, 36 months, it and all the other LLMs are getting exponentially better.

Second .. There are ~1400 movies and ~500 TV series (times 8-12-20 episodes) are written/produced each year.  90% of them are absolutely mediocre-to-awful and few would notice if they were written by AI, they are total schlock.

I grant you, a chunk of entertainment benefits greatly by being written by eloquent humans. 

I think the writers/actors, long term, will be some of the first casualties in the AI era.

I suppose you're right in that I should define terms somewhat. If the goal is "content" and there's no interest whatsoever in producing anything of any quality whatsoever so long as it can exist in some format, then sure. AI is gonna be great at that.

I understand the exponential improvement thing, but I honestly believe the asymptote is somewhere before long-form storytelling is viable. A snippet that plays for a minute or two? I guess, maybe. Like elevator music, forgettable, something that just occupies space but not awareness in its audience? Plausible.

But there is simply no chance that, without human intervention, generative AI can produce a movie script that anyone will ever want to watch.

Studios think they can have ChatGPT output a RomCom script and pay a writer "editing" rates rather than writing rates and presto chango, the human will tighten it up into Hallmark movie quality level stuff for a fraction of the cost. But, again, that's why the writers are on strike.

(also, my god it's harder to edit ChatGPT produced words than it is to just produce the words yourself. That thing is hammered garbage for writing)

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

Somewhat related, the current issue of Rolling Stone has multiple articles covering AI in relation to the music industry.   

[mu_hilltopper]

I suppose you're right in that I should define terms somewhat. If the goal is "content" and there's no interest whatsoever in producing anything of any quality whatsoever so long as it can exist in some format, then sure. AI is gonna be great at that.

But there is simply no chance that, without human intervention, generative AI can produce a movie script that anyone will ever want to watch.

..(also, my god it's harder to edit ChatGPT produced words than it is to just produce the words yourself. That thing is hammered garbage for writing)

Still disagree.  First, that even at ChatGPT4 level, the prose it outputs is quite good.  I've toyed with it a little, and a few times I've asked ChatGPT "make this funnier" .. and .. I remember thinking .. this isn't bad, it really was funnier.

You have doubts it will get better.  I don't.   It's solid now .. +3 years, it'll be amazing.

Last .. as I alluded to in the my first post .. AI is going to write a lot of crap, no doubt.  But so do humans.   The sheer volume of content that streaming/Hollywood produces, I bet 1 hour of every 10 is high quality, the rest is awful.  Have you seen a Hallmark movie?  Wow.

I would not bet against AI hitting and superseding that ratio.   

What's that old expression, with 1000 monkeys typing for 1000 years, eventually you get Shakespeare.   AI can do that instantly.

[jficke13]

Still disagree.  First, that even at ChatGPT4 level, the prose it outputs is quite good.  I've toyed with it a little, and a few times I've asked ChatGPT "make this funnier" .. and .. I remember thinking .. this isn't bad, it really was funnier.

You have doubts it will get better.  I don't.   It's solid now .. +3 years, it'll be amazing.

Last .. as I alluded to in the my first post .. AI is going to write a lot of crap, no doubt.  But so do humans.   The sheer volume of content that streaming/Hollywood produces, I bet 1 hour of every 10 is high quality, the rest is awful.  Have you seen a Hallmark movie?  Wow.

I would not bet against AI hitting and superseding that ratio.   

What's that old expression, with 1000 monkeys typing for 1000 years, eventually you get Shakespeare.   AI can do that instantly.

Again, maybe.

I do not doubt that it will get better. I believe that there are limits to how much better it can get and that those limits are somewhere before longform storytelling can be viable.

First, generative AI is not *generating* anything. It is reassembling the material it has been trained on, spitting out the algorithmically most likely next word/sentence/paragraph based on the task or prompt it has been given. Therefore, it is absolutely 100% certain that it will never write anything "new." It literally cannot do so. (yes, yes, people who think that there is no original art or all the plots have already been written may step in here and make those claims).

Second, I'm not convinced that generative AI models and tools are not going to experience some kind of recursive training collapse by feeding on the already-AI-Generated content that is beginning to choke publicly available for scraping data sets. Train ChatGPT on THE WIRE and maybe it can churn out a plagiarized-ish facsimile of THE WIRE, but then it's going to train itself on the facsimile, and the facsimile of a facsimile, and soon enough garbage in, garbage out will control.

Third, the benchmark for improvement that you are reporting is short. "Take this joke and make it funnier." Sure (see my earlier comment about elevator music). "Hold a protagonist, relationship character, and antagonist each with distinct voices, play each off each other across an A and B plot, and keep everything consistent across a 120 page feature length film script" Is a bigger ask. "Construct a decade-long mega arc of comic book movies out of dozens of characters with each movie within this megaarc a self contained story that leads to a capstone event that provides a resolution to everything that came before" Or, "Build an ensemble cast across a 5-season, 10-episode/season show, bridging arcs in every episode, every season, and series as a whole, providing resolutions to each arc that are satisfying* to the viewer." I just think that threshold is beyond the point at which these tools will be able to reach even given all the computing power and data in the world.

*Lastly, and this is very ineffable and wishy washy and you're just going to say that I the writer am the buggy whip man of 1910 clinging to the assumption that people will never take to those horseless carriages, but there is something to writing, music, filmmaking, acting, to "art" that defies quantification, and therefore is probably not something that lends itself to algorithmic generation. What makes a character arc satisfying? Why was everyone hanging on every new episode of GoT until it ended so poorly that basically everyone has forgotten it ever happened? The endings, the character arcs, were not satisfying resolutions that followed from the ground that came before (and those were human writers with big rooms and lots of resources behind them and they failed to stick the landing). I can talk to you for a long time about patterns that make satisfying resolutions more likely, but at the end of the day I simply don't believe a computer can hit this note except by accident because it does not and cannot understand the human condition. And it is reference to the human condition that underpins this.

At the end of the day it boils down to this: If the studios win, you will be correct in that generative AI tools will create stuff. It's just not going to be stuff you're going to want to watch. That much, at least, I will guarantee.

[MU82]

Given that AI will destroy the world before it comes up with a TV script even as good as the one from John From Cincinnati, this discussion is moot.

[Pakuni]

What about AI actors?

Isn't this just a fancy way of saying animation is about to see serious adoption?

The entertainment form that generates the most amount of revenue globally is gaming. More than all sports leagues, TV and radio advertising combined. Isn't that nothing but animation? Thus showing the art form is already very popular meaning audiences will not have a problem adopting it?

Well, animation isn't exactly a new art form. It's been around about as long as film. And in the 100 years or so since the general public - outside of child-oriented fare - has strongly favored viewing real people on their screens over animated counterparts. I'm not convinced that AI-generation is going to significantly increase the public's appetite for animation not geared towards children.

And gaming is a totally different experience from the passive nature of watching a movie or TV show. If you want to tell me that AI-generated interactive programming may threaten traditional film and television ... I'm skeptical, but willing to listen. But people aren't going to start preferring cartoon or CGI films and TV shows because they play FIFA and Call of Duty.

[MU82]

And just wait till we all prefer watching AI-generated sports over humans playing football, basketball, baseball, hockey, golf, tennis, etc.

AIMan1 vs AIMan2 definitely will be more entertaining to watch than Alcaraz vs Djokovic!

[Not A Serious Person]

And just wait till we all prefer watching AI-generated sports over humans playing football, basketball, baseball, hockey, golf, tennis, etc.

AIMan1 vs AIMan2 definitely will be more entertaining to watch than Alcaraz vs Djokovic!

Not to mention porn

[Uncle Rico]

Good.  I’ve been cheering for Hollywood’s demise when they showed Lucy pregnant on TV and made Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn pretend to approve of interracial marriage in that movie.  Way too woke for me

[Not A Serious Person]

Well, animation isn't exactly a new art form. It's been around about as long as film. And in the 100 years or so since the general public - outside of child-oriented fare - has strongly favored viewing real people on their screens over animated counterparts. I'm not convinced that AI-generation is going to significantly increase the public's appetite for animation not geared towards children.

I was referring to the deep fake level of animation that is indistinguishable from real people.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

I was referring to the deep fake level of animation that is indistinguishable from real people.

Deep fakes interlay an image over an already existing video of a real person. I'm not sure how effectively they could replace an entire person

[Not A Serious Person]

Deep fakes interlay an image over an already existing video of a real person. I'm not sure how effectively they could replace an entire person

But this is at the core of the strike. They pay an actor for one day of work to capture their image, and then they use it forever without paying them.