They really tried to pull that stunt after black mirror showed exactly why they wouldn’t want that lol

Right?! That’s disgusting tbh.

If "one day's pay" was my current annual salary, I wouldn't mind that deal much. But obviously the execs mean an actor's typical daily pay, which is a terrible deal.

What will be really interesting, is even with protections for their own likeness, eventually someone is going to create a really good independently designed body that AI can use. And inevitably, as many permutations as anyone could ever use or need. For scenes that just need a lot of extras or generally very little acting skill/facial expressions in particular, that work is going to dry up.

Like, I get it, actors need to make a living and need protections. But much like with many other tasks, computers are going to kill off a lot of the work in that industry.

Imagine one such actor becomes big. Like if you had this contract with a young Johnny Depp. Why pay him millions for your new movie if you can slap his AI face on a replaceable cheap actor.

Will probably be even worse for female actresses than it already is. Why use the aged version if you can use their face at “their peak”. When they were young and poor enough to sign that crap.

It’s a dystopian future we’re heading to.

Some movies sell, or get noticed, due to the star power. What you say is certainly it is possible as we have seen with lot of sleeper hits with folks who are not mainstream actors, However producers likely have risk aversion since a production is still expensive. I suspect eventually AI processing will be cheap enough for studios to just make this happen (like how we have animated characters right now) without the need for any likeness.

yes, they could do that, if actors didn't form a union and refuse to work on movies that do things like that

Vox also did a video on the writer's strike initially and it sounds like a lot of the same concerns are appearing for the actors as well.

No kidding! I'm glad he's being so transparent about it. He's amazing

A big part of it is also that streaming shows are siloed. So while Friends and Seinfeld have been running continuously for the last 25+ years, a new Netflix show might be hot for one week and then forgotten. It's not necessarily going to be syndicated to other channels where the royalties will flow.

A likely story. I bet he's made millions in residuals just from the Squat Cobbler video. /s

What was that interview?

You mean Canadian baby Mark Brooks?

Bc of how on demand works Netflix set the trend of basically buying out back end for above the line. So bigger up front fees but no residuals etc.

Also not all actors in the guild are movie stars. People you just see in episodes here and there etc are working at much lower levels and need the protection too

Oh that guy, the autistic guy with the trading cards on BCS

Bro did you say TODAY??? THIS IS SUCH A GREAT SURPRISE!!!!

Ya I feel like trying to find a monetary value for views per show would be difficult to determine and always changing

I mean. I get the point.

But I imagine those 19 episodes of the office have been viewed by significantly more people globally, and significantly more often, than all the episodes of Shadows.

Some people have the misconception that just because someone is famous, they must be raking in the cash. This is rarely the case. Most actors don't make millions per movie. It's essentially gig work where they make some decent money for a role and then have to go searching for the next one before that runs out. It's why so many of them have to work other jobs to sustain their careers.

I remember when Sam Lloyd was diagnosed with cancer. He's best known for having a regular role on *Scrubs* as Ted Buckland. *Scrubs* was a fairly popular show, and Ted was a well-loved character on the show. In spite of that, he still had to set up a GoFundMe to pay for his medical bills. This was a 56-year old man who had a long acting career that was more successful than the average actor, and he still couldn't afford basic medical expenses. If that's what he dealt with, imagine how poorly the many other less successful actors are doing.

Not just starring. I had a cousin who worked as an actress for several years. Had a season-long gig on a popular soap opera. She got supporting and small roles in TV and film. She did commercials and voice work.

For most of her time in Hollywood, she lived in a small apartment with three other actresses; the one bill that had to keep current was the phone bill. She could go from three days working with A-listers to standing in line at a food bank in one week.

Bingo. They aren't like pro athletes getting a guaranteed amount of money even if they sit on the bench. A pretty good portion of them have other jobs to make ends meet. This isn't a "millionaires vs. billionaires" situation, and anyone saying that it is is not your friend.

Or if you're not even a movie actor. I've heard that when you're a TV actor, most of the time, if you're lucky, you have one big break and that's it.

Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 streaming :P

>Brad Pitt or Scarlett Johansson or Jason Sudeikis...

🤣 One of these things is not like the others...

This should be the top comment. Total ownership to someone's likeness in perpetuity without pay in this age of overhyped AI tech is a *ridiculous* thought. But the Writers' Guild strike is going on week 10 and the studios wanted to use AI to shortchange the writers as well so this is definitely par for the course.

There is a comparison frequently being made that compares the situation to automation in manufacturing. That this is no different than a factory working getting replaced by robots.

While there is *some* merit to that comparison, it discounts the fact that in manufacturing work what is being replaced is your *labor*. What's being replaced by the AI is the *product* (since an actor's work *is* the product, not just the result of their labor).

So to keep the manufacturing analogy: It's like a famous artisan having their dead corpse used as a robot puppet so that the company can still say their product is made by the aforesaid artisan.

If their likeness is so desirable, then they should at minimum receive royalties every time it's used.

Yeah, when you first sell a TV show you sign a contract that covers the first 2-3 seasons. And at that point, you have no idea whether the show will be a smash hit, a total failure, or somewhere in between. If a show's good enough to get renewed for a third or fourth season, that's because it's popular. And if it's popular, that means the creatives (writers, actors and directors) are all suddenly hot commodities. So of course they want to negotiate for more money. And sometimes the networks/streamers just go "Yeah no, we're not doing that," and pull the plug. Even though they would still make a profit on additional seasons, it's not as big a chunk of the profits as they made off the initial seasons, so they'd rather cut the whole show loose and try again with a new idea.

Which is incredibly short-sighted, because most new shows are not that popular. And because shows with 3+ well-regarded seasons have a lot of rewatch value. It would really benefit networks in the long term to commit to fewer shows for more seasons. But a lot of those execs are only worried about the upcoming financial quarter so they can make sure their salaries, bonuses, and career are where they want them. It's a bad way to run things.

EDIT: For anyone wondering, what makes this different for streamers vs. broadcast is that back in the day, when a TV show became super popular, it actually *made the network more money*, because advertisers would pay based on how many people were watching. You want to advertise during reruns of Judge Judy? That'll be $50,000 for a 30-second spot. Want to advertise during NBC's Must See TV lineup? That'll be $1 million for the same 30-second spot. Etc. But now when a streamer is subscription-based, they make the same amount of money per episode whether it's watched by 10 people or 10 million.

The endless pursuit of profit is ruining everything in this country.

That’s why they cancelled Bosch, and started a new show called Bosch Generations or something with the same cast. Slapped back to season 1.

honestly, i think people in this sub and no stupid questions are just karma farming sometimes. i also see the same question asked multiple times.

And The Rise of Skywalker showed a terrible example.

Not to mention "Joan Is Awful" was a huge hit of an episode, so the whole AI/deepfake argument is fresh in people's minds. Studios were out of their minds to propose this.

Another point to add is there are a lot of actors out there. From the numbers I can find, SAG-AFTRA has 160,000 members. Sure, big actors in Hollywood might get paid absurd amounts of money, they don't particularly need to go on strike. But they are the top of the top. Think of extras in movies as an easy example. All of those people are trying to make a living working as an actor as well.

You understand not all actors are giant stars right? Most are working class like us. The Robert Downey Jr's and Brie Larsons only make up a very small percentage of actors. Think of how many people make up a scene. The people in the background. The guy who has 3 lines who just gives Ironman a cup of coffee.

Save up a bunch of them and cash them all at the same time (as long as you do it before the checks expire). The studios need to keep track of all the residual deals going *way* back, and keep honoring them, even if it gets to where sending the check out costs more than the face value of the check.

Hollywood has some of the most complicated contracts ever written (source: wrote payroll software for Hollywood, in a former life), and the residual system for repeated showings of movies and TV was a system that worked really well, when the majority of viewings were from TV networks, over broadcast or cable TV. The internet, and on-demand streaming, have changed the landscape considerably. New ways of fairly compensating the cast, crew, writers, directors, etc., are needed.

Sam Lloyd, who was a major side character in a popular show (he was Ted in Scrubs), died from cancer while struggling to afford his health care. I found out about it when Kate Micucci posted his Go Fund Me to her Instagram, it blows my mind that someone could be in almost every episode of such a big show with several plot lines centered around him and could still struggle with paying for healthcare (even if it is American healthcare).

You know, at the time, it did seem a little superficial from her. But now with this whole discussion being brought up it makes sense.

Who knew, context matters.

She can't afford to not work and retain her current lifestyle is what she means.

Her house was $3m and she paid $300,000 over the asking price for it. Live like the rest of us and I'm pretty sure she'd be fine.

Eh, she bought a 3200 sq ft house for 3 million, paying like 300K over the asking price. I don't think you can really compare that to the average Joe who has to work to pay rent or end up homeless.

Sounds kind of out of touch tbh.

\>If I wanted to take a six-month break, I don't have income to cover that

lol welcome to the club. None of us regular people can take a six-month break from our jobs either. Out of touch

How can they even say that with a straight face? That's basically an insult

Oh, you mean like people have to prepare for an interview and send 1 billion resumes for job offers when they know that HR is just using the scanner?