La La Land strikes are nuking our lucrative film industry too

WHEN the likes of Brian Cox, Andy Serkis, Hayley Atwell, David Oyelowo, Simon Pegg, Naomie Harris,

- Stephen Armstrong

Imelda Staunton, and Rob Delaney gather in Leicester Square it’s usually for the premiere of a Hollywood movie. On Friday, they were speaking at a rally in support of striking US actors.

“We’re going to withhold our labour and we’re going to win,” Delaney told the noisy crowd. “We’re going to get our slice of the pie that we made up the friggin’ recipe for and wrote the cookbook for.”

Since the Screen Actors Guild walked out on July 14, joining the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines Hollywood — the world’s richest entertainment industry — has simply shut down. The money Los Angeles was expecting to pay for film and TV show for this year was estimated at $240 billion — roughly the turnover of Google, almost twice the turnover of Ford, and four times the turnover of Boeing.

Stars including Meryl Streep, George Clooney, Jennifer Lawrence, Joaquin Phoenix and Jamie Lee Curtis have all signed letters backing the strike action — demanding a higher rate of royalties from streamer services like Netflix and Disney + and contracts that restrict the use of AI in replicating actors.