By Dawn Chmielewski and Danielle Broadway and Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – While Hollywood celebrates the end of actor and screenwriter strikes, the multibillion-dollar economic impact on everyone from crew members to suppliers will take months to account for.
Scriptwriters and actors on strike cut spending, burned savings and took on debt to survive. Laundromats and other service industries laid off employees, while hardware stores sold their inventory or closed.
Preliminary estimates put the economic cost at more than $6 billion in lost wages and business impact across California and other large production states, such as Georgia and New Mexico, because most production of scripted films and television shows has been paralyzed.
The lights are coming back on on film and television series sets, with studios rushing to resume recording.
However, Hollywood it should not return to the frenetic production pace of the streaming war, when studios competed for subscribers and prestige. Higher studio labor costs, falling television advertising revenues and an increasingly skeptical Wall Street are reducing the number of television shows, cutting jobs and moving some productions to cheaper locations outside the United States.
The full economic damage from the strike, including bankruptcies, will take time to be tabulated, with experts still analyzing the data.
The human impact will be more difficult to quantify, although painful personal accounts, such as that of Celia Finkelstein, actress and member of the Screenwriters Guild, give an idea of the impacts. She and her husband, a production coordinator, were out of work for six months.
“There was no income in our house,” Finkelstein told Reuters. “We are grateful because we received loans from the union and had savings, but it was a very tough summer.”
Members of the Writers Guild (WGA) went on strike in May. The Actors Union (SAG-AFTRA) did the same in July.
Writers returned to work in September after receiving pay raises, restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence and benefits such as residual payments that compensate writers for popular streaming series. Hollywood actors made similar gains in a temporary deal reached with the studios on November 8.
Suffering to earn enough
The strike dealt the final blow to some careers. Aspiring actress Serena Kashmir has quit the industry after working in Hollywood for over 11 years.
“I was working five ‘survival jobs’ and still living with my mother,” Kashmir said. “I have a good CV, images, contacts, and an acting degree, but it didn’t work out.”
Kashmir concluded that being a “full-time actress” was not a reality and moved to Colorado to make a living doing something else.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m Robert Neff, a professional writer and editor. I specialize in the entertainment section, providing up-to-date coverage on the latest developments in film, television and music. My work has been featured on World Stock Market and other prominent publications.
