SAG-AFTRA officially went on strike last Thursday after walking away from negotiations with the studios and streamers, represented by AMPTP. The studios thought they could bleed the writers dry (to the point of people losing their homes) and no one would care, the writers would come crawling back. Continuing AMPTP’s streak of impeachable chess-playing, Disneyâs once-and-again CEO Bob Iger spoke on Thursday about how concerned he was over the disruption both strikes would cause. Iger makes $27 million a year, based on conservative estimates. For contrast, BuzzFeed has assembled various recent social media posts from working actors (not movie stars) on the literal pennies theyâre making from streaming residuals under the current contract:
Brock Powell, a voice actor for popular animation, video games, and anime, shared he only made a âgrand totalâ of $58.49 for 48 episodes of a Disney show produced early during the pandemic. Even more shocking, Brock was once âpaidâ a negative penny for an entire episode that aired back.
Constance Marie showed that streamers are still showing her show, Switched At Birth. Although the series remains popular, she only receives two, three, or no cents for those episodes viewed. âTheyâre still making money, but I cannot make a living and pay rent and pay my insurance off of these residuals,â she said, referring to the streaming companies.
Heather Matarazzo responded to a TikTok user who questioned, âWhat are you elites doing for the struggling Americans that contributed to your wealth?â Her response showed the âelite numbersâ of residuals that equaled six to nine cents per episode.
Stephen Glickman from Nickelodeonâs Big Time Rush revealed he made zero in residuals from all the times the show was played on Netflix for two years before moving to Paramount+.
Derek Russo, who was Hunter U-92 for the first episode of Marvelâs Loki on Disney+ [#6 on the callshet], grossed less than $1,000 in residuals despite the series being one of the most-viewed shows on the streamer.
Jack Bensinger from Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out The News joked that he felt like he was âOVERpaidâ for seven episodes of residuals totaling a whopping 19 cents.
Kylie Sparks shared they were in one of Netflixâs âmost loved series this season,â and they received zero dollars in residuals in addition to being paid a 10th of their guest star quote.
Actor Kris Lofton shared a photo of a SAG-AFTRA direct deposit showing he only made $31.86 in residuals for an entire month.
For anyone wondering, Brock Powellâs $58.49 for 48 episodes comes out to roughly $1.22 per episode, but thatâs rounding up. And show of hands: who has rent that is more than $31.86 a month? Anyone? These asinine, greedy studio CEOs truly want to keep all the earnings to themselves until theyâre publicly shamed into redistributing the income in a fair and equitable way. Keep bringing the receipts, actors, the truth will out!
photos from Instagram
All of these examples are from Netflix. To this day, I still donât understand how Netflix has all this money for original programming and makes a profit from it. I donât think subscriptions cover it. At least with streaming service like Hulu or Amazon Prime they show commercials. Netflix never did until recently.
When interest rates were super low, Netflix (and lots of other companies) could take on debt/find investors looking to throw money at them fairly easily. That’s what covered it (and we see now that they also kept their costs down by screwing over actors). Netflix apparently “stopped borrowing” in 2021, but prior to that was basically taking out loans to fuel growth, and with super low interest rates that was a relatively low-cost strategy. But, interest rates are now higher so taking out a loan is a more costly proposition (plus it seems there is a ceiling for how many subscribers you can hook in and all these companies are hitting it). In short, Netflix doesn’t really have much history of turning a (sustainable) profit and with stuff like introducing ads, cracking down on password sharing, etc., I think we can see that they are struggling to both have the money for original programming and the “profit” (investor payout/executive salaries) that they think they “need”.
I am guessing with these multiple strikes the actors and writers will get some kind of better deal and it will be interesting to see how it is paid for. It’s clear that people have a limit on how much they are willing to pay–very few people seem to maintain long-running subscriptions to multiple services, it’s more they take on one or two services for a few months and then move onto a different one as they get interested in. If they all raise prices simultaneously as a result of the strike that might make people accept increases in cost but a significant increase will surely cost them some subscribers. So then…will the executives and shareholders be willing to take a haircut?
Haircut or pay cut?
Netflix does NOT make the majority of its original programming, that’s how.
It’s part of their licensing/ distribution deals that they’ll get to slap on A Netflix Original in the credits.
They are known for being cheap AF with their productions. A few years back our production team was given a budget for a film that was coming in at 7-8M, they wanted it lower. We got the budget down to 4M, were paid $500 and said thank you so much but the director wants to work with a different producer. I recently came across the film on my home screen and it brought back such terrible memories of that experience with them.
This is so disheartening. I really thought the streaming of shows on Netflix was contributing a proper income to the talent that contributed to the shows. I hope the strike helps to get the necessary changes in place for a living-income for all. Many of the talent donât seem to even make a basic standard of living wage and need a second or third job to afford housing and food. đ
As the other post says, it’s their big secret revealed. They actually thought they could continue along this path with no one the wiser!
Thatâs the upside here, weâre seeing loud and clear how this model actually works and people are paying attention.
Thats so disgusting. Everything is turning into a profit mechanism and it is absolutely detached from the people who are involved into making that even possible. Everything is being objectified. We are now treating humans much like we treat animals to harvest for their sellable goods while keeping them in a sloppy stall. Except the humans don’t even get a stall for free– they have to just potentially be homeless.
This is absurd.
Iâm glad that actors are speaking out about how little they make. Whether itâs from residuals, or from being promised so many days on set and most of those not panning out, most actors make NO money.
Actors are not greedy; the studio execs are. You donât last more than a month in this business as an actor if you are greedy. You do tons of work at your own expense: acting classes, dance and voice lessons, gym memberships, facial treatments to stay looking young, your nails always have to be in good shape because casting directors can (and do!!) ask to see them in an audition. You have to own some basic lighting, a backdrop and a tripod to film your self-tapes. You need new headshots frequently, and child actors need them even more often.
Studio execs have been pushing all of these costs on to actors forever, and now theyâre not even getting residuals.
My daughter is a non-unionized actor and the pay rate for jobs has just plummeted lately. She keeps getting auditions for roles that pay so little that I tell her if they book her, weâre turning it down because we canât afford to go to the shoot. She was offered a role in a PSA commercial (online distribution only) for a childrenâs hospital. It was actually a union gig but was approved at âlow payâ because itâs a PSA for a charity. I get it, we all want the childrenâs hospital to use their money to treat children, so fine. But this paid $500 and was in another city entirely. So the agent takes 20%, and weâre on the hook for hundreds of dollars in mileage, a hotel in a big city, and food. We would spend far more money than she would have made. I said that the hospital might be a charity, but we are not!!
This has to end. The industry is kept alive by people who will do anything to possibly become famous. And that same industry ensures that those same people will always struggle to make rent.
The system, for everything, is to keep everyone in debt so that they will do *anything* at below-market rates and keep unions out of the picture. Unions can’t be effective if most/all their members are so desperate that they will cross lines. Debt is the leverage that keeps the studios in control.
Recently, NPR had a really good (and depressing) piece on how the American economy works to keep us all in some form of debt. The article discussed how immigrants are shocked that you need credit to function in this country, because debt is seen as a bad thing nearly everywhere else.
The cost of a home, the cost of college, the cost of a used car and insurance. Just basic things are being pushed so far out of reach of affordability. Itâs scary.
I have 2 subscriptions Prime and Netflix, Netflix I hardly watch, as I think they have a lot of filler on there, On prime I mainly buy the series I love and watch that on repeat till I find a new series I like. I keep Netflix to watch stuff H&M bring out, I think Netflix must be cooking the books in both directions, maybe the deal wasnât as big as reported in the papers 1 and 2 viewership of their programs if the documentary had 81mil views they should have made back their investment. I can see people rethinking subscriptions Tv. Because the figures I see people paid is appalling.
All of this no money talk is shocking, but I found this tweet thread about what streaming has ended incredibly enlightening. He isnât even an actor or in the union. He was in an a cappella group at a nearby college when Pitch Perfect was filming. His group got cast as one of the rival groups and he used his own singing voice. So that counted as having a line in the movie, which meant he got the base level of residuals. The year after the movie came out, those residuals paid for his rent in LA while he was a grad student! He still gets $100-300 a quarter! That is what has been lost in streaming.
The SAG minimum wage is $1082 a day, or $3756 for a week. Considering actors are lucky to work a few gigs a year, thatâs not much. What makes acting a job people can afford to do is the chance that what you are working on becomes a hit and you get those residual checks.
Hereâs the link
I hope this comes to a successful conclusion for the actors and writers, but expect it will take awhile.
I’ll take reruns over reality tv please!
Reality TV is what we got out of the last writer’s strike. I expect my video entertainment bill to go up for fair compensation. Fair.
Question that is solely from curiousity and knowledge seeking, not blaming – how do actors contracts work around residuals? Is it a set rate? Do they negotiate as part of contract terms (acknowledging that itâs hard to do so because of the risk of replacement)? How does it differ from traditional television? Zero doubt the streaming services are to blame but how was it allowed to happen in the first place?