For Studios, Real Pain Will Arrive Around Labor Day

The numbers vary, but many Americans say they'd be in trouble quickly if they lost their income. Not half could cover expenses for three months, Bankrate reports; many would tap out sooner. The scale is much different, but the Hollywood studios are feeling a little of that during the writers and actors strikes. Being shut down for a month or so doesn't scare them, the New York Times reports; the studios can postpone spending money on preproduction and bidding on scripts until the industry gets back to normal. They can revisit projects in the works and drop costly ones. But if the strikes aren't settled by Labor Day, it's a different story.

Around that point, the movie and TV show release calendar for next year could become a mess, forcing projects to be postponed and again giving the industry pandemic-type headaches. "If it remains short enough to prevent an overwhelming backlog of movies, the situation can be managed," said the head of a chain of 50 movie theaters. Executives weren't that worried when TV and film writers struck in May, but the walkout by the more powerful Screen Actors Guild is different. Scripts that the studios already had can't go into production. That union's members include famous celebrities with loyal followings among the studios' customers. The most recent negotiations with actors, in 2020, were resolved without a strike, and the studios expected no problems this time.

Executives miscalculated, telling the Times they thought they'd made meaningful concessions, though some conceded stonewalling the writers on artificial intelligence issues was a mistake. But the rhetoric on both sides has been strong. An unnamed executive told Deadline the studios would "bleed out" writers until they "start losing their apartments"—a sentiment the studios disavowed. Strikers have portrayed Disney CEO Bob Iger and Warner Bros.' David Zaslav as greedy villains. "We're looking at class warfare," said Michael Nathanson, a media analyst, per the Los Angeles Times. "Working-class people are looking to take their anger out on the studio executives," he added. Jonathan Taplin of USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab doesn't see a painless resolution, either. "This is not going to end well," he said. (More Hollywood strike stories.)