Hollywood on Strike – Stratechery by Ben Thompson

The Hollywood strike is setting talent against studios, but the problem is that both are jointly threatened by the reality of the Internet and zero distribution costs.

the last time actors and writers were on strike at the same time; the primary driver of that unrest was the rise of television. As for the last actors strike, in 1980? That was about the rise of home video. This leads to the first takeaway: the most important driver of unrest between studios and talent has always been technological paradigm shifts, and this time is no different.

In this case it is the rise of streaming that strikes me as more consequential than AI, but to first dispatch with the latter, it seems to me that writers are much more threatened by AI; it’s much more plausible today to imagine using an LLM...

The Hollywood strike is setting talent against studios, but the problem is that both are jointly threatened by the reality of the Internet and zero distribution costs.

the last time actors and writers were on strike at the same time; the primary driver of that unrest was the rise of television. As for the last actors strike, in 1980? That was about the rise of home video. This leads to the first takeaway: the most important driver of unrest between studios and talent has always been technological paradigm shifts, and this time is no different.

In this case it is the rise of streaming that strikes me as more consequential than AI, but to first dispatch with the latter, it seems to me that writers are much more threatened by AI; it’s much more plausible today to imagine using an LLM to generating a B-movie script or filler television than it is to imagine AI replicating actors (particularly since actors licensing their likeness may in fact turn out to be very lucrative)...