Hollywood is in bad financial straits, and its actors and writers want more money.

The actors strike is "probably" going to last a while, according to SAG-AFTRA leadership.

Drescher, during an impassioned speech, which you can watch below, said "We have a problem".

"This is a very seminal hour for us. I went in thinking that we would be able to avert a strike. The gravity of this move is not lost on me," she said. "It's a very serious thing that impacts thousands, if not millions of people all across this country and around the world. Not only members of this union, but people who work in other industries that service the people that work in this industry."

"We had no choice. We are the victims here. We are being victimized by a very greedy entity," she added.

Deadline understands that Drescher and others will begin picketing tomorrow morning with a bus leaving SAG-AFTRA HQ around 8:30am, where they will go to Netflix, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and finishing off at Disney.

The Nanny star said that she was "shocked" by the way that studio execs are treating actor. "I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history."

The last contract provided that series and movies made for streaming services could pay actors less money in salary and in residuals. That was back when streaming was a niche thing. Now it's almost half the industry, and the Film Actors Guild wants streaming to pay more.

She added that actors can't keep being "marginalized, disrespected and dishonored" by a business model that has been changed by streaming. "If we don't stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble. We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business," she added.

Executives want to let writers and actors starve for a while, before earnestly negotiating with them.

Deadline revealed earlier this week that the AMPTP strategy for the writers, who are also on strike, was to keep it going until October, when those scribes will be running out of money.

"The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses," a studio executive told Deadline. Acknowledging the cold-as-ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it "a cruel but necessary evil."

Part of the dispute regards using scans of background actors and animating them via AI for crowd scenes and the like. Apparently studios want to own these scanned models in perpetuity:

"This 'groundbreaking' AI proposal that they gave us yesterday that our background performers should be able to be scanned and get paid for one day's pay and their companies should own that scan their image, their likeness to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation, if you think that's a groundbreaking proposal I suggest you think again."

I think a lot of people would agree to a one-time payment to use a bodyscan in crowd scenes. What I think she's objecting to is that members of the Film Actors Guild will not be paid to mill around in crowd scenes if the studios own a bunch of cheap AI simulacra.

The Film Actors Guild and the Writers International of Motion Pictures should be concerned that the studios will declare the strike a force majeure -- a legal doctrine which allows someone to invalidate contracts when, due to circumstances beyond their control, those contracts can't be fulfilled. They'll use this to cancel contracts and projects they're currently locked into and would like to be free of.

Even leftwing simp Bob Iger is hinting about this.
After telling CNBC's David Faber Thursday that the labor situation is "very disturbing" and how the Hollywood unions aren't being realistic about the current financial climate, WGA picketers went postal on social media by pointing out the massive pay disparity between the Disney CEO and most working writers today.

In a lengthy sit-down with CNBC from Sun Valley, Idaho, Iger addressed the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes and his ongoing feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Though his digs at DeSantis were lauded -- he called the governor's claims that Disney is sexualizing children "preposterous and inaccurate"--

More on that later.

-- he lost the Tinseltown rank and file when he said "this is the worst time in the world" to walk off the job.

It pretty much is.

"I understand any labor organization's desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver," Iger said. "We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal with the directors guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business. We wanted to do the same thing with the writers, and we'd like to do the same thing with the actors. There's a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive."
I'm not rooting for anyone here. They can all hang as far as I care.

And so it begins.

Posted by: Guy who always thinks things are beginning

Bobby Boi, are you sure Disney isn't sexualizing children?

Bob Iger's got another Woke Winner on his hands: