Heiry Pena & Ashley Sanchez
November 7, 2023
Over the past few months writers and actors have been on strike in Hollywood due to underpayment. The actors and writers that went on strike were a part of the associations known as SAG (Screen Actors Guild), WGA (Writers Guild of America.) These groups went on strike against the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) a major company in Hollywood that is in charge of major studio companies such as Disney, Netflix, Warner-Bros, Universal, and many other well-known companies. In this article we will explain what has taken place these past few months and the reason behind this long-lasting strike that has become known to be the second longest strike in Hollywood history.
According to Forbes, the strikes began back on July 14th of 2023 and May 2, 2023. The WGA was the first to go on strike on May 2nd, 2023 within the industry with many SGA members joining their strike in solidarity. The SGA then also went on strike as well on July 14th. The writers believe that they aren’t receiving enough compensation with the streaming services eroding their working conditions (New York Times). These writers wanted a better residual pay and royalty for reruns because this is a crucial source of income for middle-class writers (New York Times). Actors also ran into the same issue with studios refusing for pay raises and royalties from streaming revenues. Due to actors and writers being unpaid for their jobs they were on strike for months and have only recently had these strikes begin to slowly reach a possible end.
During the time of the strike, the SAG-AFTRA, would approve actors to work on “39 independent projects” according to “Vulture” which would include two films from the studio A24. The two films that SAG would allow to continue to be filmed from A24 were “Mother Mary” and “Death of a Unicorn”. A24, unlike other studios, is independent and isn’t associated with any Hollywood Studios. Unlike the AMPTP, A24 doesn’t have a set pay therefore they are able to pay their actors and writers a good amount of money. Since they are an independent company, they are also different in the way they raise money, which is by auctioning off their props from different ones they have created instead of getting funded by a studio.
While actors and writers were on strike, there were many movies and tv shows that got delayed or the release date got pushed back. Popular shows such as “Stranger Things” which was supposed to start filming over the summer has been postponed and “The Last of Us” has been pushed back to be released in 2025 according to “Latimes.com”. Highly anticipated movies such as “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider Verse” which was going to release in March of 2024 has been delayed to an unknown date and “Blade” which originally was going to release September 6, 2024 got pushed back to February 14, 2025. In these delays, writers and actors will hopefully receive the pay that they deserve since they are the ones who bring these stories to life.
Within the recent month, the writer’s strike had ended after members of the strike would approve of the new contract that the AMPTP sent them. These leaders would then send this new contract to members of the WGA. This however can’t be said about SAG-AFTRA who are still on strike since their wants aren’t still being met by the AMPTP. Hopefully within these upcoming months, AMPTP will eventually have to make an agreement with the SAG just like they did with the WGA. If not, there isn’t going to be any actors to play characters within tv shows and movies.