Writer's Guild Going on Strike

The ratings of broadcast and cable networks is in the noise. Almost nothing on cable gets above a million views except the talking heads shows on the cable news channels. To give you and idea how bad it is, a syndicated network, Grit, which plays TV shows and movies from the '50s and '60s is the fastest growing network. Well, that's not saying anything because it is the only thing the geriatric crowd is interested in watching and everything is in decline.

A decent show on network or cable is excited to have 500,000 viewers these days.

If it weren't for sports, I don't think the broadcast networks would be around.
 
ahalpert said:
Shockingly, you are not unique. Or even uncommon:evil:
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ha...I've been referred to as a pretty unique individual - for better and for worse - my entire life, but I think if one lives a crazy life he or she will meet a lot of unique minds out there.
 
Paul F said:
If it weren't for sports, I don't think the broadcast networks would be around.
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The trillion dollar question is if all the programming just migrates to other platforms or if it's an actual decline in viewership and societal interest. If they still needed just as many cameramen and DPs but our work was being shown on streamers rather than networks then I don't think any of us would care.
 
Incredible. Shawn Fain says they negotiated the UAW contract to expire on May 1, 2028 and he wants everyone in the country to walk out that day as part of a general strike.

https:/twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1749497048079188346?t=utK6EeuLobTc9fDlwZUU4A&s=19

A couple strike-related tidbits I'm not sure I mentioned. After UAW won its negotiation, a number of non-unionized auto manufacturers unilaterally raised wages and benefits to achieve parity with the UAW contract or at least close the gap. That's one of the principal ways that non-unionized folks benefit from unions.

Drew Barrymore's writers all quit after the strike ended to punish her for scabbing.

Matthew Belloni commented 3 days ago in "What I'm Hearing" on the absence of theatrical material in the wake of the strikes. This is an example of the revenue plunge we all expected to follow the positive cash flow studios enjoyed during the forced work stoppage. (I'm not sure if it's related, but Netflix has been pushing a lot of video games in my face in recent months even though I've never played one on their platform.)

Coming out of the strike year, traditional distributors need product. There are weekends—like this weekend, actually—where there are zero wide theatrical releases scheduled in the U.S. Picking up a few films at Sundance and spreading them across the calendar like chips on a roulette table might lead to a jackpot, or at least a business devoid of the usual competition. “I hope that a bunch of Sundance movies wind up in theaters quickly—in the next six months,” producer Jason Blum said at the festival’s opening press conference today. Theater owners certainly agree.
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How is AMC holding on? Before covid, they lost a measly $149 million. Last year they lost nearly a billion after losing $4 billion in 2020.
 
Some interesting comments in an interview with Jerry Seinfeld (whom I increasingly despise for his politics, but let's leave that aside for the moment).

When asked about choosing filmmaking later in his career, Seinfeld said, “It was totally new to me. I thought I had done some cool stuff, but it was nothing like the way these people work. They’re so dead serious! They don’t have any idea that the movie business is over. They have no idea."

After being pushed to elaborate on the part about movies being over, Seinfeld replied, “Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives. When a movie came out, if it was good, we all went to see it. We all discussed it. We quoted lines and scenes we liked. Now we’re walking through a fire hose of water, just trying to see.”
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nofilmschool.com

Why Does Jerry Seinfeld Think the Movie Business is Over?

Competition from TV, the internet, and social media has lessened cinema's cultural dominance. But can it come back?
nofilmschool.com nofilmschool.com

The current moment does feel like the beginning of the end to me (or maybe the middle of the end). A long, slow decline to a lower plateau of relevance and size for the movie business. Like radio or theater.
 
You don't have to be Jerry to know that, ha...it's been over.

Will never come back, too much to watch on too many screens with too much tech.
 
Its true that traditional cinema at the theater and movies as a whole have decreased in importance but it's demise is exaggerated. As movies killed live theater, video killed the radio, and now streaming has killed movies. They don't really kill them, they'll always exist but the importance and viewership changes. The people who worked in movies will still do the same thing just the content now will be predominately streaming shows. It not really a bad thing, we now can get to know characters better and writers can do more. It's all storytelling and entertainment at the end of the day. It's true when we only had a few good movie a year we could come together but now every thing is so fragmented. Choice and options vs community.
 
The fallout from the strikes has been terrible. Fewer projects shovel-ready means crews are starving for work, theaters are starving for films, and studios are starving for revenue.

Screenshot 2024-05-30 at 12.20.53 AM.png

variety.com

WGA Strike: One Year Later, Writers Face a Different Sort of Crisis

On the anniversary of the start of the WGA strike, writers who are working get higher minimums, but the industry as a whole is contracting.
variety.com

FilmLA, a nonprofit that tracks on-location permitting in the city, released a report in April that revealed a slow bounceback in production after the dual strikes. Local on-location filming in the first quarter of the year was down 8.7% from the first quarter of 2023. Television production was especially impacted, with production falling 16.2% from last year.
Paul Audley, the president of FilmLA, said these findings are startling when considering that film and television production saw a “retraction” at the start of 2023 in anticipation of the looming writers’ strike.
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I AC'd with the first DP quoted in this article, Keith Dunkerly, on the 2013 feature 'Pawn'. Before the union found out he was on a non-union production and booted him off.

www.latimes.com

Hollywood crews in 'crisis': 'Everyone's just in panic mode' as jobs decline

2023's dual strikes by writers and actors created a dry spell for everyone in Hollywood. Crew members are still feeling the aftershocks.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com

I agree with a lot of this op-ed:

Meanwhile, outside the billionaire bubble, the delays, particularly of big-budget tentpole movies, scrambled this summer’s slate and left theaters in the lurch. Yet everyone appears shocked, shocked, to find that this has real-life implications for ticket sales. This was the lowest Memorial Day box office haul in almost 30 years: What went wrong?

Putting aside the larger philosophical question — if the studios that make movies don’t care if months go by without movies getting made, why should the general public suddenly bestir itself just because there’s a long weekend? — one has to wonder about the problem of reasonable expectations.

As in Hollywood not having them.

I don’t know what bean-counting genius thought that “The Fall Guy,” a sweet if highly energetic rom-com based on a mildly successful early-’80s TV series, could pass for the sort of early Marvel-ish blockbuster Hollywood has increasingly built its summer ticket sales upon. Nor do I understand the magical thinking that put such extraordinary expectations on a holiday weekend anchored by “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” a prequel for a nearly 10-year-old film and the latest in a 30-year-old franchise, and “The Garfield Movie,” which is based on a cartoon that appears in newspapers and achieved peak cinematic popularity 20 years ago.

In cinemas “Furiosa” and “Garfield” joined “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” which managed to own its May 12 opening weekend by virtue of having absolutely no competition, and John Krasinski’s animated “If,” which seems to be doing OK mainly because no one saddled it with self-destructively high estimates...

Long criticized in terms of diminishing artistic returns, franchise films have become a box office staple — serialized storytelling, i.e., television, for the big screen. And as with the old model of television, studios are increasingly tying success to a very small viewing window. Opening weekend has become the cinematic equivalent of a pilot, and those movies that don’t do well in their first two weekends often are written off as failures, with all the ensuing bad press.

Meanwhile, the film industry has almost completely ceded the kinds of stories once told in mid-budget films — which often had smaller opening weekends but greater staying power — to television.

Now, as the streaming-disrupted television industry figures out a way forward — moving perhaps to the more traditional, long-running, sitcom and procedural models — it may be time for the film industry to make fewer high-stakes blockbusters and more mid-budget films.
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www.latimes.com

Column: Hollywood's high-pressure expectations game has created a box office doom loop

How Hollywood's absurdly high expectations — on big-budget franchises, familiar IP, opening weekend and more — led to the current box office crisis.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
 
He probably doesn't even own a gun. And even if he does, anybody can put a gun in their mouth. The trick is to pull the trigger.

......I'm sorry, I go off on these tangents.
 
Paul F said:
He probably doesn't even own a gun. And even if he does, anybody can put a gun in their mouth. The trick is to pull the trigger.

......I'm sorry, I go off on these tangents.
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You doing alright, Paul?

By the way, I saw this bit recently where Norm MacDonald touched on suicide. My wife and I were cracking up

 
ahalpert said:
You doing alright, Paul?

By the way, I saw this bit recently where Norm MacDonald touched on suicide. My wife and I were cracking up
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I'm fine. I know because my mother had me tested.* I think I'm going crazy trying to figure out how to use Davinci Resolve's Fusion. It is a challenge.

Norm is currently my favorite comedian, although I never understood what he was doing with his podcast. I've never seen a full show, but the bits on Youtube..... a lot of it does not appeal to me. I like the way he went out. Instead of blabbing about his cancer to everyone, he kept it to himself. I have much respect for that.

*Sheldon, Big Bang Theory
 
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