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      Drew Barrymore’s Show Is Picketed as It Resumes Amid Writers’ Strike

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      The star, who dropped out of an MTV awards show in May to demonstrate solidarity with striking writers, plans to bring her daytime talk show back without its unionized writers.When Drew Barrymore announced in May that she was stepping down as host of the MTV Movie & TV Awards to show solidarity with striking Hollywood writers, she received an outpouring of praise from fans and viewers who supported her stance.But the news that she would be bringing her daytime talk show back without its unionized writers was met with a very different response: A group of picketers demonstrated on Monday outside the CBS studios in Manhattan, where the show was taping the first episode of its fourth season, which is scheduled to be broadcast next week. One man held a sign that said, “Drew the right thing.”The network said “The Drew Barrymore Show,” a sunny, interview-oriented program that debuted in 2020, was returning without written material that is “covered by the W.G.A. strike” — similar to the approach taken by some other talk shows during the dual strikes by writers and actors that have shut down much of Hollywood. “The View,” the daytime juggernaut, began airing episodes from its new season this month.On Monday afternoon, as “The Drew Barrymore Show” prepared to tape its first episode since April, a couple of dozen picketers from both the Writers Guild of America and the union that represents actors, SAG-AFTRA, marched outside CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street, as audience members lined up along the sidewalk for the day’s taping.Barrymore, the actress turned host, defended the show’s decision to return in an Instagram post on Sunday, saying that the show, which begins airing new episodes on Sept. 18, would be “in compliance with not discussing or promoting film and television that is struck of any kind.”“I own this choice,” she said in the post, adding: “We launched live in a global pandemic. Our show was built for sensitive times and has only functioned through what the real world is going through in real time. I want to be there to provide what writers do so well, which is a way to bring us together or help us make sense of the human experience. I hope for a resolve for everyone as soon as possible.”The Writers Guild of America wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that the show was covered by its union and that “any writing on ‘The Drew Barrymore Show’ is in violation of WGA strike rules.”Other daytime television programs, including ABC’s “Tamron Hall” and “Live With Kelly and Mark” have aired new programming during the writers’ strike, which has lasted more than four months.Cristina Kinon, a co-head writer of “The Drew Barrymore Show” who carried a sign at the picket that said “Drew’s WGA crew,” said she was one of three striking union writers at the show, and that they learned the show would be returning when production put out a call for audience members.“I’m disappointed,” said Kinon, who has been with the show since its pilot. “I wish that everyone in the industry could stand in solidarity with the unions. But everyone has to make their own personal decision.”After two people wrote in social media posts that they had been removed from the audience at Monday’s taping for wearing Writers Guild pins that they had been given outside the studio, the show said in a statement that they had been not permitted to attend because of “heightened security concerns.” The show said it would offer them new tickets. Late-night shows, which are more reliant on writers, are still dark. During the last strike, which started in 2007, the hosts came back gradually after about two months while their writers continued to strike. None have opted to do so yet.Instead, five of the hosts — including Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver — recently started a podcast, called “Strike Force Five,” with the proceeds going toward support for their shows’ staffs.Part of the backlash centers on Barrymore’s decision early on in the strike to bow out as host of the MTV Movie & TV Awards. At the time, Kinon said, the talk show had already gone on its summer hiatus, but she had been involved with writing Barrymore’s material for the awards show until the host decided to drop out.In her Instagram post, Barrymore said she had made the decision to step down from MTV hosting duties because the show “had a direct conflict with what the strike was dealing with which was studios, streamers, film, and television.”“I did what I thought was the appropriate thing at the time to stand in solidarity with the writers,” Barrymore said in the post. She added, “However, I am also making the choice to come back for the first time in this strike for our show, that may have my name on it but this is bigger than just me.” More

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      Venice Film Festival: Adam Driver Calls Out Netflix and Amazon Amid Strikes

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      His film “Ferrari,” a big-budget indie from Michael Mann, is the kind of adult drama the major studios have shied away from.The name placard on the dais said “A. Driver,” and if you’re making a Ferrari movie, you’d certainly better have one.This particular Driver happened to be in high demand at the Venice Film Festival, which bowed on Wednesday and has mostly had to make do without famous movie stars as the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike prohibits actors from promoting films made by most major studios. But since the new Michael Mann-directed film “Ferrari” will be released domestically by Neon and internationally by STX — two companies that aren’t members of the group that Hollywood guilds are striking against — its star, Adam Driver, was free to make the trip to Venice and add A-list appeal to a festival in dire need of it.“I’m proud to be here, to be a visual representation of a movie that’s not part of the A.M.P.T.P.,” Driver said on Thursday at the news conference for the film, referencing the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. He praised the interim agreement devised by SAG-AFTRA that allows stars to promote independent films as long as their distributors agree with the terms the actors’ guild is seeking.“Why is it that a smaller distribution company like Neon and STX International can meet the dream demands of what SAG is asking for — the dream version of SAG’s wish list — but a big company like Netflix and Amazon can’t?” asked Driver, who has previously promoted Netflix movies like “Marriage Story” and “White Noise” in Venice. “Every time people from SAG go and support movies that have agreed to these terms with the interim agreement, it just makes it more obvious that these people are willing to support the people they collaborate with, and the others are not.”After the crowd at the news conference applauded, Mann added, “No big studio wrote us a check. That’s why we’re here, standing in solidarity.”You wouldn’t think while watching it that “Ferrari” is an indie movie. With a reported budget of $95 million, this is the sort of lavish adult drama that Mann used to make for major studios all the time. But movies like “Heat,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Ali” and “The Insider,” all films Mann made in the 1990s or early 2000s, have fallen out of favor in our superhero-saturated era, and expensive prestige releases like this one have recently struggled to break out at the box office.Can the record-breaking success of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” reinvigorate the sort of big-budget dad drama that used to be a theatrical staple? “Ferrari” is counting on it, even if its fellow December releases, like “Wonka” and “The Color Purple,” don’t necessarily lend themselves to “Barbenheimer”-level portmanteaus. (“Wonkari” and “Ferple” just sound like off-brand Pokemon.)Like Nolan’s summer hit, “Ferrari” is about a midcentury visionary with a wandering eye: Driver’s Enzo Ferrari is a racer-turned-automaker who’s feuding with his wife (Penélope Cruz), hiding a mistress (Shailene Woodley) and trying to save his namesake company before it goes belly up. Mann tracks him during the summer of 1957, when it seemed like so many of Ferrari’s problems could be fixed by a single, momentous race. If one of his drivers can win the dangerous, thousand-mile race Mille Miglia, Ferrari reasons, it would stoke enough demand to lift the company’s fortunes. Still, his single-minded pursuit of that goal turns out to be a life-or-death matter with all sorts of unexpected casualties.It may be hard now to conceive of “Ferrari” as a Driver-less vehicle, but over the many years that Mann tried to mount it, the director flirted with leading men like Robert De Niro, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, who went on to topline the Mann-produced “Ford v Ferrari” (2019). The 39-year-old Driver is called upon to play a man two decades older for most of the film’s running time, but that gray-haired intensity actually suits him: His Ferrari is hard-nosed and compelling, like a too-serious MSNBC commentator who slowly attracts an ardent, horny fan base.Regardless of whether “Ferrari” can chase the box-office success of “Oppenheimer,” Driver said it was a miracle it was made at all, summing up the film’s truncated production schedule and false starts in a way that his title character could understand.“It’s hard not to get philosophical about an engine — the amount of pieces that have to come together, similar to films, and work on the exact right timing in the exact right moment,” he said at the news conference. “And then there’s the element of human intuition and reflex. It’s a 50/50 marriage, and that’s very much filmmaking.”When all those different elements manage to coalesce on a premium race car — or a big-budget indie film — it’s beautiful, Driver said. “It also makes you aware of how many things could go wrong at any moment,” he noted. “It’s a special thing to be part of.” More

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      Striking Writers and Studios Agree to Restart Negotiations

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      The two sides in the Hollywood stalemate will formally meet on Friday, after an informal sidebar session last week.As television and movie writers started their 101st day on strike on Thursday, the leaders of their union said they had agreed to formally restart negotiations with studios for a new three-year contract.“Our committee returns to the bargaining table ready to make a fair deal, knowing the unified W.G.A. membership stands behind us and buoyed by the ongoing support of our union allies,” the Writers Guild of America negotiating committee said in a statement. The session will take place in Los Angeles on Friday.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of entertainment companies, declined to comment. Carol Lombardini, the alliance’s president, contacted the Writers Guild on Wednesday with a request to return to formal negotiations. Her appeal followed an informal sidebar session between the two sides late last week.After that meeting, the Writers Guild sent a note to its 11,500 members saying Ms. Lombardi had indicated a willingness by studios to sweeten their contract offer in some areas, including finding ways to safeguard writers from artificial intelligence technology. The note added, however, that Ms. Lombardini had said studios “were not willing to engage” on other Writers Guild proposals, including success-based residual payments from streaming services. The note said guild leaders would not return to negotiations until studios were willing to engage on all proposals.The announcement of a return to the bargaining table was the first positive development in a dual labor walkout — tens of thousands of actors went on strike in mid-July — that has brought Hollywood production to a halt. Late-night television shows immediately went dark, and broadcast networks have retooled their fall seasons to include mostly reality series.Last week’s session, which lasted about an hour, was the first time the lead negotiators from each side had sat down in person since May 1, when talks collapsed. Both sides had characterized it as a meeting to determine whether it made sense to restart talks. With a strike starting to hurt companies and writers alike, was there a give-and-take to be had? Pressure has been increasing from multiple directions to reach an agreement.“It is critical that this gets resolved immediately so that Los Angeles gets back on track, and I stand ready to personally engage with all the stakeholders in any way possible to help get this done,” Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, said in a statement last Friday.Screenwriters and actors are worried about not receiving a fair share of the spoils of a streaming-dominated future. They say streaming-era business practices have made their profession an unsustainable one.Many streaming shows have eight to 12 episodes per season, compared with more than 20 made for traditional television. Writers are fighting for better residual pay, a type of royalty for reruns and other showings, which they have said is a crucial source of income for the middle-class writer whose compensation has been upended by streaming.The Writers Guild also wants studios to guarantee that artificial intelligence will not encroach on writers’ credits and compensation. The studios rejected the guild’s proposed guardrails, instead suggesting an annual meeting on advances in technology. (In recent weeks, studio executives have said in interviews that they made a mistake by not taking the union’s A.I. concerns more seriously.)The studios defended their offer after negotiations broke down, saying in a statement that it included “generous increases in compensation for writers.” The primary sticking points, studios have said, are union proposals that would require studios to staff TV shows with a certain number of writers for a specified period, “whether needed or not.”Caught in the crossfire of the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, as the actors’ guild is known, are tens of thousands of crew members and small businesses (dry cleaners, caterers, lumber yards) that support movie and television production. The 2007-8 writers’ strike cost the California economy more than $2 billion, according to the Milken Institute, which recently estimated that losses this time could be double that figure. More

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      Confusion in Hollywood as Some Productions Are Allowed to Continue

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      The striking actors’ union is granting waivers to some projects not affiliated with the major studios, but questions persist about who qualifies and why.When you’re making an independent film every second counts. Ash Avildsen had six days of filming left on his low-budget biopic “Queen of the Ring” — including a climactic scene involving a majority of his cast — when the actors’ union went on strike on July 14.The production, in Louisville, Ky., shut down immediately. If Mr. Avildsen could not receive an interim waiver from SAG-AFTRA, as the union is known, to continue filming, the project was likely to fall apart. The logistical and financial challenges of sending the cast and crew home and then trying to assemble them again after a strike would be too much for the shoestring production.“It was maniacally stressful,” said Mr. Avildsen, who wrote and directed the film, about Mildred Burke, who became a dominating figure in women’s wrestling in the 1930s. “We could maybe have lasted another day waiting, but after two or three days it would have been a house of cards falling down.”“Queen of the Ring” was granted the waiver, one of more than 160 the union has handed out in the past three weeks. To get one, projects must have no affiliation with the studios the actors are striking against and the companies involved must comply with the most recent contract demands the union presented to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios.Recipients of the waivers have ranged from under-the-radar projects like Mr. Avildsen’s to higher-profile films like A24’s “Mother Mary,” starring Anne Hathaway, and Hammerstone’s “Flight Risk,” directed by Mel Gibson and featuring Mark Wahlberg.For the union, granting the waivers serves three purposes: It allows companies not affiliated with the studio alliance to keep working; actors and other crew members to remain employed when so much of Hollywood has ground to a halt; and major studios to see examples of productions operating while acceding to the union’s latest demands, including higher pay for the actors and increased contributions to the union’s health and pension fund.“Here are independent producers, who generally have less resources than the studios and streamers, who are saying, ‘Yeah, we can make productions under these terms, and we want to and we’re going to if you let us,’” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s lead negotiator, said in an interview.But the agreements are also causing confusion and consternation around Hollywood. Some wonder about the propriety of working on a production when so many in the industry — the writers have been on strike since May — are walking the picket lines. For instance, Viola Davis was granted an interim waiver for an upcoming film she was set to star in and produce. But she declined, saying in a statement, “I do not feel that it would be appropriate for this production to move forward during the strike.”Viola Davis turned down a waiver, saying she didn’t feel it was appropriate to work on a production during the strike.Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe actress and comedian Sarah Silverman criticized the interim agreements in an Instagram post. She said that she had declined to work on an independent movie because of the strike, and suggested that she found the waivers counterproductive to the union’s goals.Ms. Silverman said she wasn’t sure if she should be “mad at these movie stars making these indie movies that are obviously going to go to streaming” or upset with “SAG for making this interim deal for these indie movies” during the strike.After meeting with the union’s leadership, the actress said in a follow-up post that she was happy the waivers allowed some crews to continue working, but that she still questioned the validity of granting waivers to projects with big movie stars and loose affiliations with companies that are part of the studio alliance. The alliance declined to comment for this article.One project that drew grumbles in some quarters when it received a waiver was the AppleTV+ show “Tehran.” The show, filming its third season, employs union actors, but an Israeli company oversees the production, which is shooting in Greece. That situation has created a gray zone, Mr. Crabtree-Ireland said, even though Apple, a member of the alliance, is financing the operation.Mr. Crabtree-Ireland called the approval of “Tehran” “outside the norm.”“We have to be mindful that not every country’s law lines up with labor law from the United States,” he said.An Israeli company oversees production of the AppleTV+ show “Tehran,” which is shooting on location in Greece. That situation has created a gray zone, opening the door for a waiver. Apple TV+That has not helped clear up the matter for many in Hollywood. Even when the waivers are granted, there are some — like Ms. Davis — who wonder if accepting them is akin to crossing the picket line.“What’s confusing to us is what should we be doing?” asked Paul Scanlan, chief executive of Legion M, an independent production company that crowdsources funding for many of its projects, some of which await word on interim agreements. “The messaging isn’t clear. There are some people saying, ‘Oh, these interim agreements are bad,’ but then SAG is saying: ‘No, they’re good. They’re part of our strategy.’He added: “We’re sensitive to how we’re perceived in the marketplace, and we don’t want to be one of those companies that is perceived as doing an end run around the strike because that’s absolutely not our intention.”Honoring the interim agreement does raise an independent production’s costs. According to one independent financier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the strikes have the industry on edge, production budgets can increase by 8 to 10 percent, significant for independent films that already count every penny.There is also the question of timing. Interim agreements can, as in the case of Mr. Avildsen, help a film finish production. But they can also be granted to completed projects to allow actors to promote their films, including at festivals, where they might end up securing a distribution deal with a company that the union is striking against and that has not yet agreed to a new contract. And that could get complicated.“Let’s say we sign an interim agreement,” Mr. Scanlan said. “I do think it makes it harder for Netflix to buy something that has already agreed to terms that maybe they haven’t agreed to yet.”For Mr. Avildsen, he’s still basking in the relief that his movie was able to complete production. The idea that overcoming that hurdle may ultimately imperil “Queen of the Ring” from finding distribution is a scenario he’s not yet ready to grapple with.“It’s a scary thing to think about,” he said. “If by this time next year, when we are ready to release it, if they’re still in their joust, that would be a big drag.” More

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      Actors are Turning to Cameo Amid SAG-AFTRA Strike

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      Others are using the service, through which fans can pay for personalized videos, to engage with followers while not publicly promoting work.On July 24 Cheyenne Jackson, an actor, posted a photo on Instagram that showed him shirtless, with glistening abs, veiny arms and his lips parted.“This is me subtly letting you know I’m back on @cameo,” its caption read.Cameo is a service through which celebrities and others can be paid to make personalized videos commemorating birthdays, bachelorette parties, divorces and the like. Mr. Jackson, who has appeared in the “American Horror Story” TV shows and in “30 Rock,” said in a phone interview that he reactivated his account because of the continuing strike by SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union.Mr. Jackson, 48, charges $95 for a video message and cited bills — “I have two kids” — as one reason he is on Cameo. “There are only so much sources of income,” he said.“My husband cringed a little,” he added. “But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”Since Cameo debuted in 2016, some actors have used it when traditional work has dried up. In 2021, as the pandemic raged, the actor Andrew Rannells joined Cameo to raise money for the Entertainment Community Fund, a nonprofit formerly known as the Actors Fund. On a recent episode of “And Just Like That…,” the “Sex and the City” reboot, the character Che Diaz, played by Sara Ramirez, starts making Cameo videos after a TV pilot is canceled.According to data provided by Cameo, there was a 137 percent increase in the number of accounts reactivated or created on Cameo in July compared to June (the strike started on July 14). The number of orders for videos remained about the same for each month, but Cameo said orders usually drop in July because there aren’t events like graduations and holidays like Father’s Day.Some of the new and reactivated accounts were for people unaffected by the strike, but others were for union actors like Mr. Jackson and Alyssa Milano. Fran Drescher, the SAG-AFTRA president, also reactivated her account, according to Cameo, though it is not currently accepting bookings.The actress Alyssa Milano, who charges $250 for a video message on Cameo, said she was using the service as an income supplement while traditional work has dried up.via CameoThe actress Christa B. Allen said she reactivated her Cameo account as a way to engage with fans at a time when she is making fewer public appearances.via CameoMs. Milano, 50, who charges $250 for a video message, said in an email that Cameo “is a great way to supplement some income during this idle time.” Ms. Drescher’s representatives said she was unavailable to comment for this article.While the actors’ union is on strike, its members are forbidden from filming most projects and from promoting most projects at movie premieres, film festivals and events like Comic-Con. But making Cameo videos, for the most part, is allowed, said Sue-Anne Morrow, the national director of contract strategic initiatives and podcasts at SAG-AFTRA.“As long as there’s no promotion of struck work within the Cameo, there’s no problem,” Ms. Morrow said in an email.In May, around the time that movie and television writers’ unions went on strike, the actors’ union finalized a deal with Cameo that allows its members to have earnings from certain bookings applied toward their health insurance minimum earnings requirement, Ms. Morrow said. Those bookings must be made through Cameo 4 Business, where corporate customers like insurance companies and grocery store chains hire talent for promotional videos.Ms. Morrow said that the union pursued the agreement because Cameo is one of many ways actors can support themselves when they’re not acting.The average price of a Cameo 4 Business booking is $1,700, said Steven Galanis, a founder of Cameo and its chief executive. Non-business bookings — the types of videos Cameo is most known for — average $70. Cameo receives 25 percent of the fee for any booking, and the rest goes to the talent.Mr. Galanis compared the opportunity created by the strike for Cameo to the period of time in the early pandemic when, as he put it, “every other income sort of dried up” for actors and other entertainers. “I’m hoping that the strike ends tomorrow,” he said. “But if it doesn’t, we’re going to be here.”On July 18, days after the actors’ union went on strike, Cameo announced a round of layoffs, which happened a little more than a year after the company laid off 87 workers in May 2022. Mr. Galanis declined to comment on the number of people affected by the recent layoffs, or on the number of people now working at Cameo.Some actors who have started reusing the service since the strike said that making money was not the only reason that they returned to it. Christa B. Allen, who has appeared in the TV show “Revenge” and in the film “13 Going on 30,” said that Cameo offers an opportunity to engage with fans at a time when she is making fewer public appearances.“We’re nothing without our fans,” she said. Cameo, she added, lets actors “connect with the people that love them and have supported their career in a time when they’re not going to be making traditional media.”Ms. Allen, 31, who uses the stage name Christa Belle, reactivated her Cameo account during the strike after using it sporadically since 2017. She charges $75 per booking and said she has made about $1,000 to date.“Cameo is not something I think of as a moneymaker,” she said. More

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      A Times Reporter on the SAG-AFTRA Actors’ Strike and Hollywood’s Future

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      Lights. Camera. Action? Brooks Barnes, who covers the entertainment business, discussed the state of film and television amid an industrywide shutdown.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.It was around 1 a.m. one Thursday last month when Brooks Barnes received the email he’d been waiting up for.“SAG-AFTRA TELEVISION, THEATRICAL AND STREAMING CONTRACTS EXPIRE WITHOUT A DEAL,” read the subject line on the email, sent by a union representative.Movie studios and unionized actors failed to reach a deal after weeks of negotiations. Hours later, members of SAG-AFTRA’s national board voted to strike, and tens of thousands of actors joined the screenwriters already on the picket lines over issues including pay. The decision brought film and television productions to a standstill and left the fate of Hollywood hanging in the balance.“When something big like this happens, you just have to put down everything else you’re working on,” said Mr. Barnes, a reporter who covers Hollywood for The New York Times. In an interview, he shared his thoughts on Hollywood’s first industrywide shutdown in more than 60 years and on how the repercussions may be coming to a theater near you. This interview has been edited.What do unionized actors want?There’s a long list of things; their proposals are detailed and specific, down to what a background dancer gets paid for rehearsal time, for example. But the main sticking point is that actors want residual payments from streaming services.In the traditional model, actors would get paid for the work that they do on a TV show or movie; they would get paid residuals once that show or movie was resold as a rerun on TV. Sometimes the residual money could be huge, depending on a show’s popularity.In the streaming era, that model has changed. Actors still get paid a residual for streaming work. But it’s essentially a flat fee. Actors want those payments to be based on a show’s popularity — more for a hit like “Stranger Things,” for example, and less for something that flops.The other big sticking point is artificial intelligence. Actors want guardrails so their likenesses will not be reused digitally without their approval and a payment.Using an actor’s likeness without their consent makes me think of a recent “Black Mirror” episode, in which characters’ likenesses were used in bizarre ways without their permission.That’s exactly what this is about, but it’s also to protect background actors. In a crowd scene, they might scan a background actor’s likeness and reuse it in another movie just to populate the scene. It doesn’t have to be Salma Hayek or Tom Cruise.How does the writers’ strike fit into all this?The writers are on strike for similar issues, including residual payments. Writers are also looking for a type of quota system; they want studios to staff a writers’ room with a minimum number of writers. Streaming services often use minirooms, a type of writers’ room used early in the show-development process that involves half as many writers. Basically, they’re doing much of the same work with fewer people. The union wants protections against those job cuts. How soon will we see the repercussions of the actors’ strike?Viewers won’t see too many repercussions for a while because the assembly pipelines work so far in advance; a lot of upcoming TV series and films are already finished. But some big movies planned for Christmas have been pushed to next year, and the fall TV schedule will be heavy on reality shows and reruns. Actors are also not allowed to promote any of the work that they have already finished. And that’s crucial to studios; they want actors on talk shows and podcasts to promote their projects.You recently wrote about a factor that’s contributing to the strikes: the absence of a power broker to help mediate.Yes, the last Hollywood strike took place in 2007-8. In those days, it was a simpler business; Netflix was mostly an indie company and had just begun streaming. Back then, there were studio elders and senior statesmen who could come in and say, OK, let’s iron this out and get back to work. That kind of person doesn’t exist so much anymore.Why not?Companies just have different cultures and priorities — a Netflix versus a Disney versus an Apple. The other reason is some of the studio executives who could mediate have had problems. Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, has become a bit of a villain for comments he made about the strike on CNBC, so he’s not really the greatest person to generate trust. You need someone whom both sides trust, respect and will listen to.I wonder about your thoughts on the success of “Barbenheimer” at the box office. It feels bittersweet.It’s exciting to know that Hollywood can still deliver these kinds of cultural thunderclaps, but the reality is the reality: The hits are few and far between. And it’s hard to feel very good about the business when hundreds of thousands of people are on strike or impacted by the strikes. More

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      Hollywood Strike Leaves Influencers Sidelined and Confused

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      Despite not being in the actors’ union, many content creators are passing up deals to promote films or TV shows because they don’t want to be barred from the guild or face online vitriol.Deanna Giulietti is not in the actors’ union, but she turned down $28,000 last week because of its strike.Ms. Giulietti, a 29-year-old content creator with 1.8 million TikTok followers, had received an offer to promote the new season of Hulu’s hit show “Only Murders in the Building.”But SAG-AFTRA, as the union is known, recently issued rules stating that any influencer who engages in promotion for one of the Hollywood studios the actors are striking against will be ineligible for membership. (Disney is the majority owner of Hulu.) That gave Ms. Giulietti, who also acts and aspires to one day join the union, reason enough to decline the offer from Influential, a marketing agency working with Hulu.The union’s rule is part of a variety of aggressive tactics that hit at a pivotal moment for Hollywood labor and shows its desire to assert itself in a new era and with a different, mostly younger wave of creative talent. “I want to be in these Netflix shows, I want to be in the Hulu shows, but we’re standing by the writers, we’re standing by SAG,” Ms. Giulietti said. “People write me off whenever I say I’m an influencer, and I’m like, ‘No, I really feel I could be making the difference here.’”That difference comes at a cost. In addition to the Hulu deal, Ms. Giulietti recently declined a $5,000 offer from the app TodayTix to promote the Searchlight Pictures movie “Theater Camp.” (Disney also owns Searchlight.) She said she was living at home with her parents in Cheshire, Conn., and putting off renting an apartment in New York City while she saw how the strike — which, along with a writers’ strike, could go on for months — would affect her income.Representatives for Searchlight and TodayTix did not respond to requests for comment. Hulu and Influential declined to comment.The last time Hollywood’s screen actors and writers went on strike, social media platforms and the $5 billion influencer industry didn’t exist. The actors’ union began admitting content creators in 2021 and still has only a small number of them, but questions have quickly emerged around how the union’s dispute with the major Hollywood studios will affect popular internet personalities.The union’s message that content creators will be blocked from membership if they provide work or services for struck companies has sent many scrambling. A number of creators have pledged support for writers and actors and circulated “scab” lists of influencers who promote new releases or appear at related events. Others have been frustrated or confused by instructions from a union that doesn’t protect them, and that some had never heard of.SAG-AFTRA, which represents some 160,000 movie and television actors, approved a strike on July 13. The division with the studios is driven largely by concerns about compensation in the streaming era and artificial intelligence. They joined screenwriters, who walked off the job in May, the first dual shutdown since 1960. During the strike, actors are not able to engage in publicity efforts for their projects or appear at film festivals or events like Comic-Con.Influencers have become crucial to the entertainment industry in recent years, especially during the pandemic, building buzz and promoting products. They post videos to hype new TV shows and movies, appear on red carpets and at events like the MTV Video Music Awards, and unbox products tied to film and television characters. Typically, as in the case with Ms. Giulietti, outside agencies hire creators on behalf of the studios.“If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future,” said Mario Mirante, a comedian with 3.6 million followers on TikTok.Marshall Scheuttle for The New York TimesNow those activities, besides limiting their career ambitions, could lead to internet backlash, with one nonunion influencer already posting an apology video for appearing at a recent Disney movie premiere. Others have posted promotional videos anyway, without backtracking or pulling the content. At least one creator posting from a recent premiere opted to turn off their TikTok comments, possibly to avoid potential criticism. On the flip side, videos from creators about jobs and events that they rejected in solidarity with actors have racked up praise and views on TikTok.“We don’t have power to make decisions for the talent, but we will in this moment recommend not engaging with struck work or struck companies on paid or organic projects,” said Victoria Bachan, president of Whalar Talent, a unit of a creator commerce company that works with more than 200 content creators. She added that young creators were also more apt to be supportive of unions and organized labor.Still, Whitney Singleton, a 27-year-old with 1.2 million TikTok followers, has been frustrated by what is being asked of her. She had never heard of SAG-AFTRA until the past couple of weeks. Ms. Singleton, using the moniker @KeepUpRadio, has attracted fans by singing and rapping about her favorite video games like Fortnite and streaming herself playing video games. It has been her full-time job for three years. She has collaborated with struck companies like Amazon in the past.“I really do value creators, and I want them to get what they deserve,” Ms. Singleton said. “But it’s really hard for me to just be finding out about an organization and being expected to fall in line with their initiative when I feel like it’s new to me and the influencer space.”She said some influencers were being asked to turn down five-figure deals, and that “the majority of creators I’ve talked to about it feel it’s unfair that as nonunion members, they’re being included in this conversation.”Ms. Singleton was invited to an early screening of the “Barbie” movie and said that while it wasn’t a paid promotion, the union’s guidelines for promoting the movie were “what I would deem murky.” Ultimately, she decided to post about the event, for which she dyed her hair pink.“I actually got no negative feedback, it was all positive,” she said. “For a moment, I felt a bit scared and put in a corner with these requirements because I respect creators in all industries, but I wouldn’t be being true to my heart if I had let those things stop me from living my life and sharing the content.”The union did not respond to questions about the criticism or about how many influencers are included in its membership. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates on behalf of the biggest studios, has said its offers to the writers and the actors were “historic” improvements on their previous contracts.The reality for many creators is that they dream of someday achieving a level of fame beyond the smartphone screen, making the threat of blacklisting by Hollywood’s most powerful union an ominous one.Mario Mirante, a 28-year-old comedian on TikTok with 3.6 million followers, recently posted a popular video about turning down a deal to promote a show based on his support for actors and writers and his long-term ambitions. Mr. Mirante has hoped to work in Hollywood since childhood, and even has a tattoo of Jim Carrey as “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” on his arm.“That’s a lot of influencers’ goal and aspiration and why they do it,” said Mr. Mirante, who lives in Las Vegas. “We love to entertain and express ourselves, and that’s the Super Bowl, that’s the ultimate, being in a movie or a TV show.”Mr. Mirante has previously been paid to promote the movie “Champions” starring Woody Harrelson and a product tied to the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise. “If I were to help the big studios amid this, I’m just hurting myself in the future, if that makes any sense,” he said. “Of course I’m not a part of it right now, but they’re fighting for basic rights, livable wages, not to have their A.I. likeness taken.”Krishna Subramanian, a founder of the influencer marketing firm Captiv8, said studios might need to pivot away from creators during the strike and get agencies to make more traditional display ads to place on Facebook and other sites.Simone Umba is a TikTok creator with more than 300,000 followers who primarily posts about TV shows and movies but has paused making such videos. She said that many influencers felt that they were “stuck in the middle,” but that most were opting to side with the union even as invitations and deals piled up.“We knew we were going to get approached, and it’s like we’re in a really messy family feud,” Ms. Umba, 26, said.She added, “Regardless of if you want to join the union or not, you don’t want to be one of those people that was willing to take a check instead of standing in support of people fighting for actual livable wages.”Ms. Umba said that it had been painful to miss out on posting about the star-studded “Barbie” movie after this summer’s marketing bonanza and that she had declined to attend an early screening of the film in Atlanta. She and a friend were messaging recently after trailers for “The Marvels” dropped, agonizing over their inability to post.“We were texting each other back and forth, like, this is so hard,” she said. She said she was prepared to hold out for months but was already thinking of holiday releases. She crossed her fingers, held them up and said, “Please, please, don’t let it get to Christmas.” More

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      ‘Barbenheimer’ Is a Huge Hollywood Moment and Maybe the Last for a While

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      The big launch of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” should have been a celebratory moment, but an industry on pause has darkened the mood.Margot Robbie in “Barbie” and Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” will help bring hundreds of millions of dollars in box office receipts this weekend.Warner Bros Pictures/Universal Pictures, via Associated PressThe film industry’s happiest weekend in a long time may also be its last happy weekend for many months.With the dual opening of “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s comedy based on the Mattel doll, and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a biopic about the mastermind behind the atomic bomb, the pop culture phenomenon of “Barbenheimer” is upon us. Though the movies are wildly different in style and tone, by helpfully landing on the same day, the buildup has so captured the public consciousness that many movie fans, who have been slow to return to theaters at all, are eager to watch two of the year’s most anticipated titles back-to-back.Analysts have predicted a record-breaking box office weekend: “Barbie” will debut well north of $150 million domestically and may even top the opening gross of this year’s champ, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” “Oppenheimer,” also in its first weekend, is set to make more than $50 million, a thunderous achievement for a dense, three-hour drama. For a theatrical sector still battered by the pandemic and diminished by the rise of streaming, this potent double win would normally presage popped corks all over Hollywood.But any champagne will come with caveats, as the two movies open during a dual strike that has brought the industry to a near-standstill.On Friday, the Hollywood actors’ strike reached the one-week mark, after the 160,000 members of the SAG-AFTRA union joined members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike since May. Both labor actions are expected to last for months, scuttling plans to put new studio films into the pipeline and jeopardizing the ones already set to come out, since actors have been ordered not to promote them during the strike.“It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times,” said Michael Moses, who oversaw the release of “Oppenheimer” in his role as the chief marketing officer for Universal Pictures.He noted that in the past few weeks, as the “Barbenheimer” hype grew, so did the animosity between the guilds and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the organization that bargains on behalf of the studios. With both sides entrenched and the strikes expected to continue into the fall, the mood for many in Hollywood this weekend will shift between joy and unease.“Celebrations are tempered,” Moses said. “But we still need a healthy business on the far side of this.”Even those cheering the success of “Barbenheimer” fear this weekend’s box-office sugar high might be short-lived. There are no other “Barbie”-level blockbusters on the release calendar until “Dune: Part Two” on Nov. 3, and even that sci-fi sequel could be delayed until next year if the actors’ strike persists, since stars like Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya and Austin Butler would be forbidden to take part in the film’s global press tour.Already, some upcoming films have had their release plans modified as a result of the SAG-AFTRA strike. The Helen Mirren drama “White Bird” and A24’s Julio Torres comedy “Problemista” were supposed to launch in August and are now without an official release date, while “Challengers,” a tennis romance starring Zendaya, on Friday abdicated its prestigious slot as the opening-night title at the Venice Film Festival, which begins Aug. 30. That film, like the Emma Stone comedy “Poor Things,” had been set for theatrical release in September in order to capitalize on a starry press push at Venice. Now “Challengers” has moved to April 2024, according to Deadline.Venice and the Toronto International Film Festival will announce their full lineups next week, and though those slates have the chance to build on the movie-loving momentum offered by “Barbenheimer” weekend, many wonder if they’ll be lacking the starry prestige titles studios normally send there. “If ‘Oppenheimer’ were a fall movie and I was taking it to Toronto, I think we’d probably at this point have decided not to take it,” said that film’s awards strategist, Tony Angelotti, citing the cost of reserving travel and lodging for the cast and makers of a major movie: “Would they refund your money if the strike continues?”While Hollywood braces itself for the next strike-related shoe to drop, Scott Sanders is feeling an unwelcome case of déjà vu. As one of the producers of a new movie-musical adaptation of “The Color Purple,” Sanders has spent months poring over a meticulous release strategy for the Fantasia Barrino-led film, due in theaters on Christmas Day. But all of that hard work could be dashed if Warner Bros. delays the movie, as it did three years ago with another Sanders-produced musical: “In the Heights” was pushed a full year to June 2021 because of the pandemic, and then released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max.Sanders said the studio has assured him that, so far, no discussions have been had about bumping “The Color Purple” into 2024. Still, he said, “If the other big tentpole holiday movies or awards-bait films start to shift, frankly, I’m going to be nervous.” He added, “The optimist in me thinks we have six or seven more weeks before we have to start taking Pepto Bismol.”The hype around “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” could rekindle a love for moviegoing, Sanders said, but there might be few titles left to capitalize on it. “Are we going to keep the momentum going from this weekend?” he said. “Or are we going to suddenly pull the emergency stop in the next month or two and go back to square one again?”If that cord is pulled, it will have a significant ripple effect. Theaters that are barely back from the brink since the pandemic would be tested once again, while the films that were already dated for 2024 might be forced to free up space. And without the usual influx of year-end prestige films, this year’s awards season could look very different — and, in another way, all-too-familiar.“Worst-case scenario, every studio on the planet decides to move their fourth-quarter movies into next year,” Sanders mused. “Suddenly, the last contenders for awards are ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer.’ Then what happens?” More