British Columbia’s multi-billion dollar film and television industry is bracing for a lean season, with actors and writers in the United States on the picket lines in a historic strike.
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists formally walked off the job at midnight Thursday, joining the Writers Guild of America in their now six-week-old strike.
British Columbia’s industry, often dubbed Hollywood North, is heavily dependent on U.S.-based productions, and the job action means aside from the few fully-Canadian productions underway, work has ground to a halt.
“It’s clearly an earth-shattering event for those of us who rely on the actors, the writers and the studios,” said JP Finn, a B.C.-based executive producer who has worked on titles like The Flash and The X-Files.
“They’ve all come to a bit of a standoff, and consequently, people like myself and all the other 15,000 people in Vancouver who work in the film business are in limbo until it gets settled.”
Film and television production was worth an estimated $3.6 billion to B.C.’s economy in 2022, according to industry-focused Creative BC, and the sector supports up to 70,000 full-time and part-time jobs throughout the province.
The work stoppage will affect “the majority of filming activity in B.C.,” the organization said.
While addressing the rapidly changing business models in film and television production is necessary, it said, “We are concerned for the workforce, companies, industry and people.”
Finn said the knock-on effect of the strike will be felt throughout the industry both by people who work directly in film and those who service the busy sector.
“Until you have a writer and an actor, you don’t hire a producer, you don’t hire a key grip, you don’t rent a studio or a fleet of wagons for the cast, you don’t do anything,” he said.
“So all of the ancillary businesses who are involved with the food chain of a film production or a TV production, they’re all shut down too — the bakeries, the clothing stores, the lumber yards, the gas stations, the car rentals.”
The Writers Guild of America’s last strike in 2007 lasted 100 days. Finn said screen actors haven’t hit the picket lines since 1980.
Key sticking points in the dispute between both unions and the studios are fair compensation and residuals, particularly as they apply to streaming services.
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Both unions also want contracts to outline how artificial intelligence can be used in the production of entertainment to prevent AI from replacing human creatives.
Vancouver-based actor Nelson Leis said he was supportive of his U.S. colleagues’ action, and that while the strike will hurt the local industry, “it’s necessary.”
Leis said he and other actors on the set of a recent production had their bodies scanned with little explanation as to what the data would be used for, raising fears his likeness could have been used without consent or compensation.
“There was concern — am I going to be digitally placed in a scene later on that I may have been paid to act in at some point? That didn’t happen, thankfully, but that’s very much a possibility going forward,” he said.
“We need some safeguards, some guardrails in terms of when we are scanned, how that’s going to be used, and we want to be compensated for using that scan in another TV show, a movie, some 3D billboard.”
Leis said he’s also supportive of the unions’ pressure on studios and streaming producers over how they pay actors.
Actors have raised concern’s they aren’t being fairly compensated for appearing in streaming content that turns out to be a hit, and that they’re increasingly being paid in lump sums and without residuals for content that stays online and is viewed in the future.
“Residuals and compensation should be reflective of what these streaming companies are benefitting from, hundreds of millions of views around the world,” Leis said.
“They are very opaque about the numbers they are getting in terms of viewership, (we need) some openness and clarity there, and residuals and compensation that are commensurate with those numbers.”
With both sides in the strike apparently entrenched in their positions, Hollywood North is bracing for a long and quiet summer.
Finn said the industry in B.C. is hoping that the unions and the employers will at least get back to the negotiating table soon.
In the meantime, he said, the strike will be expensive for everyone on the Canadian side, from showrunners down to caterers.
“All of us are going to feel that very, very much,” he said.
With files from Travis Prasad
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