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A billionaire entertainment titan says the industry has until the end of the summer to come to an agreement on strike action or risk the sector imploding.
Barry Diller is the chairman of IAC—parent company to prominent media brands like People, Daily Beast and Investopedia—who believes top executives and talent may have to agree to a pay cut in order to bring the confrontation to a close.
Members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA)—which reportedly has around 6,000 members— have refused to work since May 2. They were followed by the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, known as SAG-AFTRA, on July 13.
The last time SAG-AFTRA—Hollywood’s largest union which represents 160,000 film and television actors—joined the WGA was in 1960 as movies aired on TV.
The current strikes arose out of demands for increases in base pay as well as writers and actors asking for a greater portion of earnings from shows and movies that appear on streaming services.
The group also fears that artificial intelligence will one day make their jobs obsolete, a point Diller said had been “overhyped to death.”
Deadlines and pay cuts
The actors agreed to walk out following unsuccessful negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the likes of the Walt Disney Company and Netflix.
And neither side trust their opposition, Diller told CBS’s Face the Nation, which may result in a delay the sector cannot afford.
The man reportedly worth $4.2 billion said he fears the strike could drag on until Christmas and come the New Year, audiences will have no new content to watch so will cancel their subscriptions.
By the time agreements with the unions are made, Diller fears revenue at streaming giants will have sunk so low that it cannot afford to film any new shows or movies.
“I think there should be a settlement deadline,” Diller told host Margaret Brennan. “The truth is this is a huge business both domestically and for world export. And … it sounds like I’m crying to the skies but these conditions will potentially produce an absolute collapse of an entire industry.”
Diller, who is also the chairman and senior executive at travel group Expedia, added everybody at the “top end” on both sides of the table is “probably overpaid.”
“As a good faith measure, both the executives and the most paid actors should take a 25% pay cut to try and narrow the difference between those who get highly paid and those that don’t,” he said.
Actress Kimiko Glenn, known for Orange is the New Black and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse recently proved her point on TikTok.
A video shows a raft on Glenn’s on-screen appearances and her royalties from each episode. “Oh my god I’m about to be so rich!” she jokes as she spans down the list, before reaching the total payout figure: $27.30.
“Cents per stream” is a problem also facing the music industry, with Snoop Dogg saying the model isn’t “working” for artists. The rapper added: “Some of these artists are streaming millions and millions of streams and they don’t have millions of dollars in their pocket.”
Likewise, writers say their wages have fallen significantly over the past decade and so are asking for a 5% increase in base pay—plus an additional sum if the show becomes a hit on a streaming platform. They also want a commitment of at least six writers per show and a 13-week run.
