Actors strike kiboshes celebs’ role in promotions
Actors strike kiboshes celebs’ role in promotions
Actors including Susan Sarandon and Jason Sudeikis joined writers’ picket lines outside major film and television studios starting last Friday. They hit the pavement when the leadership of the SAG-AFTRA union approved a strike by actors after failing to come to an agreement with the studios on issues that included wages and the role of artificial intelligence in productions. We should disclose that SAG-AFTRA represents some journalists here at Marketplace.
Union actors won’t be doing any promotional work during the strike — for instance going on talk shows or even posting on social media to hype their movies. So what does that mean for box office revenue?
When the comedy “No Hard Feelings” hit theaters last month, Jennifer Lawrence couldn’t plug it on, say, late-night TV shows. Because of the writers strike, those shows were on hiatus.
The movie still made $70 million worldwide, which isn’t bad. But Scott Mendelson, box office reporter at TheWrap, said it maybe could have done better.
“That’s a film that was very much predicated on an old school movie star selling awareness and interest in the film through old school publicity marketplaces,” Mendelson said.
With the SAG strike, newer modes of publicity are also off-limits. Actors can’t appear on podcasts or even that YouTube show where celebrities eat insanely spicy chicken wings.
Actors also won’t be promoting movies on social media. Ironically, that could be better for profits.
“Tweeting prior to the movie actually decreased revenues,” said Julianne Treme, an economist at North Carolina State who published a paper on movie star tweets.
Makes sense. Previews are way better than tweets anyway.
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