The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.
Damn. That payout is a disgrace.
To clarify, this is how much “residual” the writers got out of the show being streamed after production. Imagine being a writer on one the biggest shows on a platform, and all you get for it being successful is like a tenth of a months rent.
I hope the writers get what they want. The problem is that the strikes are actually saving the studios money so it won’t be soon.
Could you elaborate on this?
Yeah… never trust any budgetary data coming out of “hollywood”. Hollywood Accounting is a thing and it mostly boils down to shifting expenditures and cooking the books to maximize profits for the studios while minimizing payouts for the talent.
Just apply a bit of common sense here: Studios make money off of film releases. They have a few in the can, as it were, but are rapidly running out. The SAG+WGA strike means they can’t make any new releases (unless they were already set up to mostly be overseas production companies). You can argue that you are saving money for Q2 but Q3 is going to be a bloodbath.
I’m taking that one with a grain of salt; it’s coming from the mouth of one ceo, with little to no apparent fact-checking, through a paper that has been widely criticized for sensationalism and unreliability in its reporting.
If people aren’t doing work you aren’t paying them wages. So yes, sure, some company probably saved 100m in wages, benefits, etc. This is what they call bottom line savings. What i’d like to hear is how this affects their top line e.g. revenue. Only the combination matters and odds are this will have impacts on the top line in the next 18-36 months.
You can’t take the company at their word on that. They’re in the middle of a labour action, of course they’re not going to go on about how much effect the strike is having on them, that’s counter to the goals of starving the other side out.
And anyways, this is saving money in the sense that burning down one’s house will save money on rent.
Saving money, according to the studios. That’s the studio bullshitting to intimidate people.
Saving them money now for massively reduced future revenue though.
The truth is these companies won’t give in unless the strike starts hitting their revenue… there needs to be a lot of shows on hold and garbage movies produced over time due to lack of good writers, only then something will happen… which i think is going to be a long fight. I’m hopeful that some good comes out of this strike for the labour.
Now that is a stat that puts into perspective why the actors and writers are striking.
