It began when Robert Downey Jr, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh and Rami Malek walked out of the Oppenheimer premiere at the moment the Screen Actors Guild strike was called. 160,000 Hollywood actors – including every big name US actor you’ve heard of – downed tools at midnight on Thursday. There are demands over pay and conditions but the big one is that AI is not used to replace actors’ voices or faces. Hollywood is first into the trenches against the Machine. Until the strike is resolved there will be no interviews, no new TV or films, nothing. Hollywood has stopped. Hollywood film and TV budgets for 2023 were estimated at $240 billion – roughly the turnover of Google, almost twice the turnover of Ford, and four times the turnover of Boeing. The UK earned £6.5 billion in direct investment from Hollywood last year. Halted. As a power play, it’s breathtaking.
Photograph Gareth Cattermole/ Getty Images
