As of today the Screen Actor’s Guild has joined the Writer’s Guild of America on the picket lines, and there’s a lot at stake, including the road ahead for Stargate. We welcome back Hollywood Marketing Veteran Jenny Stiven, along with GateWorld Owner and Managing Editor Darren Sumner, to bring all of the demands in focus and discuss how it will effect the next chapter of the franchise.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
1:00 – Opening Credits
1:27 – Welcome and Episode Outline
2:29 – Darren Sumner’s Pivotal GateWorld Article
2:56 – Guest Introductions
3:24 – Darren’s Current Perspective
7:45 – Jenny’s Current Perspective
9:54 – The Threat of AI to the Industry
11:01 – An Explosive Negotiating Headline
13:10 – Breaking Down the Demands of SAG-AFTRA and the WGA
0:19:29 – We’ve Reached a Boiling Point
0:20:00 – Three Basic Things SAG and WGA are Asking For
0:23:03 – Numbers Are Being Taken Out of Context
0:25:55 – The Big, Evil Villains
0:27:38 – Amazon Is In a Unique Situation
0:30:12 – Netflix Has Been Difficult
0:32:12 – The Domestic Audience Is Not the Money-Maker
0:34:18 – Citadel: A Global Franchise
0:37:52 – Up-and-Coming Countries Are Creating Their Own Media
0:41:50 – AMPTP Has An Internal Problem
0:42:22 – Residuals
0:46:00 – Fair Living Wages
0:46:42 – Worst Case Scenario
0:48:30 – Anger Feels Good
0:51:17 – There Is No Such Thing as “Compromise” Anymore
0:53:00 – Everyone is Feeling the Squeeze
0:56:29 – Who Will Blink First?
0:57:38 – Franchise Fatigue and Diminishing Returns
1:03:07 – Amazing Ignoring Harsh Truths
1:05:36 – Citadel’s Business Model Could Be Stargate’s
1:07:07 – Let’s Take a Deep Breath
1:08:15 – Films Are Losing Money
1:10:15 – Citadel’s Business Model Could Be Stargate’s (Part 2)
1:12:38 – Actors at Publicity Events
1:17:17 – The Convention Re-shuffle
1:20:27 – Crossing the Picket Line
1:22:34 – The Rest of the World Wants In
1:28:22 – Who would be policing the conventions for the unions?
1:29:44 – Striking Over AI and a Union’s Job
1:31:29 – What unions may strike next?
1:34:48 – What can we do to support the actors and writers?
1:36:22 – We Have Social Media This Time Around
1:39:14 – Rumors Hurt Negotiations
1:40:43 – This Impacts People
1:42:31 – “We’re Working On It!”
1:44:44 – Darren’s Watching Stargate With His Kids
1:45:33 – An Opportunity for the Franchise
1:46:52 – Avoiding a Massive Economic Problem
1:48:37 – Retaliatory Cancellations
1:50:32 – Stand Up For What’s Right
1:52:24 – We Have Social Media This Time Around Part 2
1:54:42 – What will happen with Dial the Gate in the meantime?
1:57:37 – Our Current Watch Lists
2:01:30 – David an Jenny’s Guilty Pleasures
2:03:18 – That One Time Jenny Fell On Stage
2:04:19 – Guest Wrap-Up
2:05:13 – Post-Discussion Housekeeping
2:06:09 – End Credits

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

#Stargate
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#strike
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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome, everyone, to Episode 205 of the Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. We have had a lot in flux lately. The WGA has been on strike for, I think, 73, 74 days now, Writers Guild of America. Now, SAG-AFTRA, the actors, are striking as well. So, Hollywood ostensibly is shut down. Next week it’s gonna hit Comic-Con right in the feels. My interview with Tony Amendola was, of course, canceled because by an interpretation of the SAG-AFTRA requirements, they’re not allowed to promote any potential material. I didn’t wanna just have Tony on to promote past material, I wanted him to talk about what he’s doing. Then I read this over at GateWorld, if I can pull this up real quick, as a tee up. Let me see here with you guys really quick. OK. This was an article that Darren Sumner posted about, “Well, now we don’t want a new Stargate announcement based on where everything currently is right now,” because some of the things that are coming down the pipe in terms of expectations for the next contract are so radical that everyone’s like, “OK, let’s back off of this and figure out what’s going on here.” Let me not belabor the point anymore because they’ve been very generous with their time. Jenny Stiven. I almost said Jenny Sumner. Jenny Stiven of Clio Consulting, digital marketing veteran of a number of years in Hollywood, let’s just put it that way. She’s back to discuss this with us, as well as Darren Sumner, owner and managing editor over at GateWorld, who has had his thumb on the pulse of this. Darren, how do you write this? How do you distil everything that has been going on for the past several months with the WGA and then plug that into SAG-AFTRA? Did you just take out a stream of consciousness when you wrote this? What’s going on? Hi, how are you?

Darren Sumner:
Hi. Welcome to my show. No, this is your show. You said some very nice things to me after I published the article. Honestly, the three of us were trading emails the day that the SAG strike was greenlit on Thursday. It starts with a flood of consciousness, how do I wanna talk about this? There’s Tim. Hi, Tim.

David Read:
Hi, Tim.

Jenny Stiven:
Sorry. My personal delivery of coffee for the show.

Darren Sumner:
Where’s mine?

Jenny Stiven:
If I could Star Trek it to you, I would.

David Read:
This is what I’m having to deal with after going through all of this. OK. Darren, please continue.

Darren Sumner:
I, of course, follow the trades. Because I’m covering the Stargate franchise for GateWorld I’m always reading the trade news in the context of what does this mean for Stargate. We are still, believe it or not, anticipating that Amazon and MGM are gonna announce something at some point. Jenny can talk to us more in that regard. But in terms of the strike, the writers have been on strike for over two months now. The writing was on the wall that the actors were probably gonna strike as well. Once it was announced and we started going back and forth about it a little, I process things by writing it out. I started writing and I didn’t know if there was gonna be an article at the end of it. I actually finished it on Thursday and didn’t publish it. “Well, we don’t want a Stargate announcement. Get your act together.” It’s cheeky. I didn’t know if I was gonna piss people off, so I sat on it until Friday and decided to go ahead and pull the trigger. It’s getting a really great response so far. Hopefully the point of it is clear, which is not just to step Stargate fans through what’s going on right now and what the potential implications are for the summer and for when studios are gonna be able to start talking about Stargate again. But also, to be able to throw my weight behind the actors and the writers. They need a fair contract. That’s all I think any of us are asking for, is not the moon, but a fair contract, a fair deal so that the industry can get back to work.

David Read:
Can you summarize, please?

Darren Sumner:
I summarize the whole article for you?

David Read:
Yeah.

Darren Sumner:
You can go over to gateworld.net and read it.

David Read:
Yes, please do that. The link is in the description below, so please read along.

Darren Sumner:
The quick summation for those who have not been following the trade news is that the Writers Guild has a contract, the Directors Guild has their contract, the Screen Actors Guild has their contract with all the major Hollywood studios for production, and those contracts have expiration dates. We’ve known for years that this was gonna be the expiration date of the existing contract, the last time it was renegotiated. In the years since the last contract was negotiated, the TV streaming world has completely transformed. What have we had? 10… I think we’re up to almost 10,000 new streaming services that have launched in the last five years.

David Read:
That sounds about right.

Darren Sumner:
10 or 12,000. I know I pay for most of those in my subscription wallet.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s gonna keep disrupting.

Darren Sumner:
So, streaming has totally changed the game. Jenny’s gonna give us the industry insider appreciation of this. The game has been totally transformed. Now in 2023, AI has complicated things even further because, ooh, AI is not quite there yet, but you can just picture all the studio executives looking at it and saying, “Once it’s matured, boy, how many writers, how many actors can we cut out of the expenses of the show?”

David Read:
It’s gotten good enough to scare everyone. That’s the tri- whatever, insert your quote here, that we’ve used.

Jenny Stiven:
Think about the first AI script that we had with Laurence Moroney over at The Companion. That’s about a year and a half ago now, and it was all gibberish. Laurence gave us essentially a sneak peek of what Google has now come out with, with Bard. It is unequivocally leaps and bounds. So, Moore’s law, exponentially advancing, processing every month, every week, every day. When you look at Moore’s law, this makes sense. AI now, compared to a year and a half ago, is 1,010% better than it was then to, the power of 10. So, every time we do this, it’s scraping more data, pulling more data, looking at more data. Darren, everybody that’s replying and commenting and reacting to your article, that gets scraped. Your article has already been input into information about the strike as it pertains to Stargate. Anybody who’s looking for those combinations, it’s not just about a Google SEO or a search, AI can pull those for people to write their own article and take your content, your op-ed, your conclusions. So, let alone the Variety and the quotes that you have in there from AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA, it just pulls it. It is going to be a much more key point than SAG and WGA originally thought last year when they were anticipating and planning for a strike.

David Read:
Darren, after you finish your thought, what were some of the specific points that you came away with, especially the one about one day of work? If you can get into that.

Darren Sumner:
We can maybe have the full AI conversation at some point. I don’t know if you wanna do all that now or put a pin in it, but the short of it is AI is so novel. This was blowing the minds of the tech people who were kind of close to it just this spring, before any of us normies had heard of ChatGPT or Bard or any of those tools. Like Jenny said, when The Companion started doing this, it was a fun, amusing novelty. A few months later, they did another one and then they did another one and it starts to sound like a competent story. So, Moore’s law, you push that down the road a couple of years, and again, I imagine that personnel, HR is probably the most expensive part of most productions. You imagine a studio executive who’s looking to save money on a premium show and you don’t have to hire writers. You process the chum out of the machine and then you hire an editor to clean it up and make it look like a story, look human.

David Read:
Jenny, you and I had that conversation.

Darren Sumner:
And filmable. But, David, in terms of the other point that you brought up, one of the sort of explosive headlines that’s come out of the negotiations between the AMPTP and SAG-AFTRA this week, this was revealed by the SAG-AFTRA chief negotiator, whose name is, I got it right here, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, basically says that one of the things that the studios are asking for is if you’re a background player, if you’re a day player, normally you get paid by the day. So, you’re a background player, you’re the guy walking behind the actors who have dialogue or you’re a face in a crowd. What is being proposed, Crabtree-Ireland says, is that they can pay you for one day’s work, scan you, and then use your likeness digitally forever without your permission or further compensation. If that’s true, it’s bananas. Let’s not mince words about it. For actors, we’re not talking about the big movie stars who make millions of dollars. We’re talking about the other 98% of people in the guild who are trying to make a living. Your likeness is your commodity. That’s what you have to sell. That’s what you have to offer the community. That’s part of your labor, is appearing on screen with your face.

David Read:
This is not Robin Wright in The Congress, which was, what, 15 years ago that movie came out. We’re talking about an actor who scans their likeness into a computer and we have the potential to have that now. That’s wild.

Darren Sumner:
But the idea that the studios cannot just digitally create crowds, but use real actors and digitally recreate their appearance as background players in crowd shots, that’s crazy that they would not get any further compensation.

David Read:
It’s wild. Jenny, can you frame some of the demands of both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA for me and lay out what’s at stake from your perspective?

Jenny Stiven:
You bet. So, just for everybody: AMPTP, which is what we keep hearing, is the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Essentially, it is an organization, not a union, but a management organization that represents all of the studios and all of the streamers. Netflix, Hulu, Apple and Amazon joined in 2009, I think, 2010. They had, like NATO, a conditional seat at the table, but they’ve had a full seat at the table. A couple of things that we wanna make sure that everybody understands. In 2007, 2008, the writers went on strike. A big part of that strike were digital revenues and residuals. Streamers had started. Netflix was already doing DVD distribution. Obviously, that was a huge business for them. Hulu had just kicked in. I was actually working with Hulu. Nobody really knew how that was gonna go. Originally what they were doing is they were applying standard broadcast television syndication to those residuals. Syndication is when somebody buys a show and they get to play it on their channel as long as they want for that contract time, for the money they’ve paid. Actors would be paid residuals, a certain penny on the dollar or percentage, every time that show or that episode that they were in got played, and that’s all the way down to day players. Most day players get paid a day wage. Some of them get residuals, most do not. They get paid the standard rate and that’s their work. There’s a lot of different levels here and in 2008 they agreed to a particular distribution that did not include streamers. It basically was, “a vague digital revenue residual,” and it was pennies on the dollar. The reason they agreed to it is because it had already been 100 days and what the writers unfortunately assumed is that there would be negotiation in the next round, which would be three to five years, and they wanted to see how everything fell out. What ended up happening is there’s something called a minimum basic agreement. What a minimum basic agreement does is it allows SAG, WGA, IATSE, which is all the tech, gaffers, electrical, all the people that you see behind the scenes, that’s IATSE, I-A-T-S-E, Teamsters unions, who are all the transportation, they have what’s called a minimum basic agreement. What that allows for is for everybody to keep moving forward even if the current contract is not that great. The last minimum basic agreement was during COVID, May 5th, 2020, and everybody, every union agreed to the minimum basic agreement of who and what got paid what. However, for WGA and SAG, those residuals only applied to broadcast television, because AMPTP came to the table and said, “It looks like COVID’s really kicking in. Let’s wait and see and then we’ll come back to you with a better deal.” Now, to be fair, that’s not a new negotiating tactic. Every time there is the cable revolution, radio to television, whatever it is, DVDs, and then to digital, this happens. The producers, the studios, everybody comes, the distributors come and say, “Holy crap. OK, hold on. We need to see what the fallout is, ’cause we can’t promise you 10% on the back end if we don’t really know how this is gonna go.” That’s a fair negotiating tactic. What the writers and SAG thought was, “COVID has stopped all production. We’re not gonna worry about it.” What they didn’t realize is what was gonna happen with streaming, which of course, year over year was a 123% increase, not just in their revenue but in their profits.

David Read:
So, what you’re saying is they were expecting it to continue to do this.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly. Instead, it went straight up, and Apple, obviously, but Hulu, Amazon, Netflix, had an average of 80% to 100% increase year over year in their net revenue, their net profits. We can talk later about how that has dropped off post-COVID. Makes sense. They had to contract and lay people off because they had hired to try to deal with that. Look, that’s fair. That’s the expansion and contraction of this industry. What’s not fair is that when WGA and SAG came back and said, “OK. Hey, guys. You made a lot of money on this, and we didn’t. We made nothing on this. Please compensate us for that, but moving forward, we’d like to be compensated fairly.” That’s the major reason for the strike. What happened in December, January, when the negotiating committees started meeting, is AI started busting on the scene. ChatGPT, you had the hearing before the strike, the owner of ChatGPT, you had all of this happen in February to April before the strike happened. They added AI because what they immediately saw was what Darren just said: all of this could be used, their likeness could be used and they’d never be paid for it. To anybody that works in the digital industry, that’s insane. I literally am doing a contract right now for NFTs where you don’t own the digital likeness. That just doesn’t happen. We’re talking in crypto marketplaces, that’s not happening. So, you’re talking in the Wild West, we are not signing contracts giving away likenesses. But in this last-minute federal mediation at the table that started, I think, at 10:00 PM on Tuesday or Wednesday night before the deadline, AMPTP says, “Oh, we’ve come up with this great idea. This is gonna be revolutionary.” For you, not for SAG. So, what all of this means, what all of this boils down to, is that this has been building and building and building for 15 years. What hasn’t happened, and I think honestly the responsibility lies across the board. I think people were caught napping about it in WGA and SAG because with COVID, everybody assumed that this was not gonna be a big deal ’cause all production shut down. AMPTP took advantage of that. What I find very frustrating is that there’s three basic elements that both WGA and SAG are asking for: streaming revenue that’s fair, you don’t own my likeness, you don’t own what I write, and you don’t replace me with an AI, so anything that has to do with AI. The third is the pension fund. Officially, it’s called the Entertainment Fund. WGA and SAG have very small pensions. It’s not like the teachers’ union or police union or any of those. What they came back and said was, “Hey, guys. What we’d like to do is add a 5% on the payment that you’re making to our SAG or WGA, an automatic 5% of that will go into a pension.” In essence, the writers and screen actors are saying, “Hey, I’m donating to this, but can you please make sure.” These are not huge asks in any union negotiation. But the studios and the streamers are acting literally like they’re the victims. I’m just blown away that there isn’t a more pragmatic approach to this because it’s shooting yourself in the foot. The article that came out in Variety where anonymous producers from AMPTP and the negotiating committee told Variety, “Hey, we’re just gonna shut down and not negotiate till October because Writers and Screen Actors Guild, the ones that really need it, that 85%, they’ll be starving by that time because the pension fund and the coverage strike fund will have run out. The strike insurance will have run out.” My God. They had no problem giving that story to Variety. AMPTP, when asked for comment, didn’t deny it, just didn’t wanna comment on it. So, the pragmatism is missing, completely missing. The reason you see such outrage from the Writers and from Screen Actors Guild is because you’ve got an inequity already in the guilds. There are very few industries that have that top 4% make millions and billions of dollars and then 80 or 96% of the rest of the people don’t make that. The one thing that SAG and WGA try to do is they have a distribution of back end on residuals. That’s where it’s fair. Sliding scale, but it’s still fair. It’s a percentage. So, if you make this much, OK, great, your percentage is bigger, but the percentage is the same. It’s like a flat tax, basically. Why can’t AMPTP come and be very pragmatic to the table and say, “Yeah, this makes total sense.” Any worker would want this. This is not outrageous. Stop having interviews and articles that are over here talking about the Tom Cruises of the world. That’s not the majority. There were a couple of videos and articles on TikTok and on some of the fan groups. Anybody who knows me, I was yelling at my phone at the TikTok that this guy had made. Basically, what they did was they took all the numbers out of context and they said, “What we’re gonna do is say, ‘Here’s a union day rate, and here’s a weekly rate,’ and we’re gonna randomly pick Hulu as the example, and then we’re gonna say that this is the percentage that they’d be paid because they were there for a week.” It doesn’t work that way. They pulled all these numbers randomly and then said, “See? All the writers make anywhere between 100,000 to $192,000 a year.” I’m like, “What? What?” It’s not true. Any statistician will tell you; you can bend numbers to come to any conclusion you want when they’re taken out of context. That’s what I want everybody to understand, that it isn’t about billionaires asking for more money. It’s about people who make less than I do who cannot afford to live in the city that their industry is in and they are struggling. They are trying to make basic living wages. We lost approximately 18% of our workforce after COVID because people can’t afford it. That was true across all industries, frankly, so it wasn’t shocking.

Darren Sumner:
It’s a great point. There’s something like over 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA and where are most of them gonna live? They’re gonna live in the Greater Los Angeles and New York areas. You make a great point. If the reporting is true, the studios are looking to drag this out long enough to squeeze people so that they’re feeling it, so that they’re having a hard time making rent or making their mortgage payment after three months. That’s you and me.

Jenny Stiven:
There is a strike fund.

Darren Sumner:
The majority of people who are voting in SAG-AFTRA are the middle class.

Jenny Stiven:
The strike fund and the insurance can’t cover 20,000 writers, 160,000 actors for six months. It can’t. I give credit to that top 4%. Collectively, they’ve already donated over, I think, $2 million to the funds to help people survive. The ones who are making the money are donating percentages already to make sure that those who can’t afford it. But there’s not as many complicating factors as there usually are with these kinds of negotiations. That’s what is gobsmacking to me, is that yes, there’s always complications, and it can be complex, but this is pretty straightforward. The fact that you can’t get the studios and the streamers to come to the table with straightforward solutions and proposals, and let’s be clear, some of the studios are negotiating in good faith. Absolutely. I can’t talk about that, but there are, of the, I think, 12 major players that are at the table, at least half are negotiating in good faith and are approaching this pragmatically, and saying, “We wanna do it this way. This is how we think it’s fair. We think moving forward this makes sense because we wanna be successful. To be successful, we need you guys to feel like you’re getting paid fairly and be happy.” So, it’s not like they’re all the big bad. Let’s not paint every studio and every streamer as our big evil villain of the series.

David Read:
‘Cause it’s so delicious and easy and fun to do. It feeds into all of our worst instincts to do that.

Darren Sumner:
The streamers are largely the new players here and some of them are really big players who haven’t necessarily been at the table, at least not very long in terms of negotiating with actors and writers. Are they the holdout?

Jenny Stiven:
Not during a strike. Not during a strike at all. They haven’t.

Darren Sumner:
Are they the holdouts? Are they the troublemakers, the Netflix and Apple and Amazons?

Jenny Stiven:
Apple, from what I’ve heard, is not.

Darren Sumner:
A couple generations of negotiating with actors.

David Read:
I’m interested in the one that has Stargate in its back pocket.

Jenny Stiven:
This is what I know. I’ll do what I always do; I’ll tell you what I know and I’ll tell you what I’m speculating. So, what I do know is that Amazon is in a unique position because, you guys both know that this is a bone of contention with me, the Creative Studios did lose money year over year. Now, a lot of that was because they made a lot of money in COVID, then they spent a lot of money on production, Rings of Power, The Boys, all of it, to varying degrees of success. They were legitimately pouring money into that. They are backed by a company that can cover their losses. Disney lost, in the past three years, depending upon the movie that you’re talking about, over $990 million year over year in their Creative Studios. So that’s Marvel, Star Wars and their own production studios. Now, that’s, again, out of context, because what did they make? What did they have that was a rollover from COVID? But the point is that Amazon has less to lose at the table and more to listen to WGA and SAG-AFTRA. However, Jen Salke and Nick Pepper and the rest of those, they’re not on the negotiating committee. Part of my problem is I’m not a big fan of who AMPTP currently has as their negotiating committee. It is not very diverse, it is not very culturally diverse, it is not very gender diverse and it’s definitely not generationally diverse. It’s running into a bit of the same problems, whereas SAG-AFTRA and WGA are extremely generationally diverse, gender diverse and culturally diverse. Those things that they’re bringing to the table, the numbers they’re bringing to the table, are really accurate. While Amazon may have all the best pragmatic intentions, if they don’t have a big player at the table on that AMPTP negotiating committee, which they do, it’s not Jen Salke, who has a lot on her scale that she has to succeed at. I’m not sure that, from a Stargate point of view, Creative Studios is gonna fall in our favor, frankly. If we wanted to pick a big bad, and this is my speculation, that would be Netflix. I do know factually that Netflix walked away from the WGA last-minute negotiations in April.

David Read:
I didn’t know that.

Jenny Stiven:
There were quite a few proposals on the table. I would not say that they were the only ones that weren’t happy, but they were the ones that physically left and said, “Go ahead and strike, we don’t care.” To all intents and purposes. That’s not a quote. I do know that they’ve been a sticking point for the AMPTP negotiating committee. Internally, there are problems there. They can’t come to the same decision, because, Darren, to your point, they’re the newest players in the game. In addition to that, Netflix probably has anywhere from one to three years of content in the can, including their global productions, who don’t have to stop, because due to the equity fund and the agreements they have with EU and Asia, all those guys can keep producing.

David Read:
So, they have content ready to go through approximately 2026?

Jenny Stiven:
I’ve heard anywhere from one year to three years.

David Read:
God.

Jenny Stiven:
For Netflix, they’re like, “Look, we spent $6 billion a year. We went out and bought a lot of content,” as you can tell from all of the South Korean success they’ve had, from all of the UK success, from the Nordics. They just did a huge deal with Spanish production. We haven’t even touched the fact that Amazon has telenovelas up the wazoo, and Univision, and they could do Central and South America and they’re golden. The question is, does that really bring in the United States audience? Here’s where I think the crux of the matter is. Amazon and Netflix don’t really care about a domestic audience right now. It’s not where they make their money and the studios are finding the same thing. I forget what the number was and I apologize, ’cause I was trying to put together research numbers, but the percentage of domestic to international money is about two to one; that international brings in about double or more than what they’re making domestically across the board. That’s a generalization. Again, I always wanna be really clear, numbers out of context.

David Read:
It does allow some perspective, though.

Jenny Stiven:
It does, and look, for these guys, they’re at the table going, “OK, cool. We hear you, but I’ve got Mexico who wants to sell me pretty much everything that they’re making for the next five years.” They’ve got actors who are up and coming who will take anything they can get. Not Mexico, but let’s say Panama, Guatemala, Honduras. They’ve got very active productions in Panama right now and they are hot to sell it. When I was doing a lot of international in 2019, Brazil was the huge producer. Because of everything that they’ve gone through, Argentina has come up. Colombia just offered tax breaks that have our domestic production companies going to Colombia to shoot. All the streamers, to a certain degree, can walk away from the table and say, “We don’t have to negotiate on this, because we make more money on international.”

Darren Sumner:
Wow.

Jenny Stiven:
The studios are not far behind. If you look at any of the most recent top 10 movies, the international gross receipts were much higher than domestic.

Darren Sumner:
Can we talk about Citadel here?

Jenny Stiven:
I was just gonna bring it up. Where that changes is in series as opposed to film. Citadel, there’s a couple of things here. Citadel is popular. Critics hate it. If you look at Variety or Hollywood Reporter or Deadline or The Wrap, they all are calling it a failure. Internally at Amazon, it’s not a failure.

Darren Sumner:
Not a failure. This is a new Amazon series. Richard Madden stars in this kind of international spy thriller show. I haven’t watched it yet. Have either of you guys checked it out?

David Read:
I have not, either.

Jenny Stiven:
I did.

Darren Sumner:
I did not see it.

Jenny Stiven:
I liked it. But again, everybody knows me. I’m an easy audience. You shouldn’t be going by me. There’s a lot of things I like that we all, the three of us especially, but everybody that’s watching too, would be like, “Ugh, Jen.” But I really liked it. It’s fun.

David Read:
OK. Since you’ve seen it, Jenny, why do the critics consider it awful? What’s their bone of contention here?

Jenny Stiven:
Their bone of contention is that they think the writing sucks and they think that it’s using action to fill a story. They’re not wrong. Again, another conversation, but everything can’t be an Oscar-winning, A-level movie. A B popcorn movie or series is worth it. A C popcorn movie or series is worth it. Now, here’s where the difference is. If you spend an A-level budget on a B or C-level popcorn series, you’ve got a problem. Amazon had to renew this series because they have to be able to take advantage of the fact that they’ve built these sets, they’ve already paid their actors. They can basically “syndicate” this, because I’m sure you guys all saw that HBO Max and Netflix and Amazon are now not going to keep their individual independent productions on their own streamers. They will be syndicating them out. It’s another bone of contention at the table for negotiations because, look, you’re not gonna just make money on your own subscriptions. You’re gonna syndicate this out globally, which means, hey, you can make a shit ton of money without relying on your own subscriptions.

David Read:
Look at what happened with Westworld.

Darren Sumner:
We’ve already seen it from HBO Max Discovery with some of their used-to-be prestige content a few years ago; Westworld and The Nevers. Those and lots of other shows got farmed out and now they’re on Tubi and Roku as part of that global syndication. But my point about Citadel is, from what I’ve read, it’s not a failure for Amazon because Amazon’s long-term plan is for this to be an international franchise.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly.

Darren Sumner:
They don’t really care how many Americans necessarily are subscribing to Prime Video to watch the Citadel. They want to be able to duplicate the formula in all these other territories. So, you have local spinoff of the Citadel and it now becomes this international juggernaut. It’s a very long-term game plan.

Jenny Stiven:
It is. Amazon always plays a long-term game plan. Always. Always has, always will.

Darren Sumner:
It doesn’t require this show to be successful domestically.

Jenny Stiven:
This is part of a broader, and we should talk about this in another one, because specifically for Stargate, it will have impact on it. Amazon has a very, very long-term, pragmatic approach to how they’re doing the creative studios. They know they’re gonna lose money. Fine. What they’re more concerned about is, where can they make a mark in the global market, in the international market? One of the reasons why this was a huge deal is the production company that they partnered with, the entire point is to have this be a partnered global franchise where now individual countries will have their own Citadel that they produce in territory and distribute globally to their own in-language, and then it would be not dubbed, subtitled, which is cheaper, around the world. This is a very ambitious equation, but I like it, personally. I, as someone who loves to work internationally and thinks that we need to get out of the US myopic “we’re-the-best box office,” I love this idea.

Darren Sumner:
It’s a cool idea.

David Read:
Do they all share the same universe or is it just their own take on the show?

Jenny Stiven:
No, it all shares the same universe.

David Read:
Wow.

Darren Sumner:
It’s a super cool idea, especially for my international friends who’ve had to deal with North American-centric TV and film for years. This is a really cool idea. I also notice as we’re talking about it, that from Amazon’s perspective, SAG-AFTRA doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with this.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly. They just negotiated another contract with India. No surprise, Bollywood. Here’s one that they just negotiated that might surprise people, is that they just negotiated with Nollywood, which is the Nigerian film and production. Nigerian film and production, for everybody that’s watching, is booming. Huge. I’m literally talking to Priscilla Pesci, she’s in Spain, she’s hearing about proposals from Nigeria. Nigeria decided, “Hey, we would love to not just have our folks in our own country be slave labor for oil pipelines and diamond and cell phone mining.” What they did was they looked at India, literally went and talked to them, created their own template, and now this is what they’ve got. You see it on Netflix. You’ve got several Nigerian shows on Netflix. You have several Nigerian shows on Amazon. I was talking to somebody who was just shocked, who will remain nameless, and they said, “And they speak English, so we didn’t have to subtitle it.” Oh my God. So this is a huge, huge step for these guys. They don’t care. Now, ultimately, the biggest draw still internationally is some of our biggest stars. What I would have loved to have seen instead of this posturing, instead of this, “We don’t need you, we can go internationally,” because let’s be honest, India and China, we have to deal with that.

Darren Sumner:
Yep. They’re not going away.

Jenny Stiven:
The continent of Africa has at least five or six active production countries that are trying to get themselves on the map, literally. Europe already has; they churn it out. But for instance, Spain and Greece, who as we all know had a massive crash after 2008, 2012, one of the things that they’re trying to do is build their economy back up via culture export and production. They’re offering massive tax breaks to shoot in Spain and Greece. OK. No problem here. Therefore, all of these things could have been a pragmatic approach to the table. My understanding is that is the approach Apple took, which is, from what I’m hearing, one of the good guys at the table, where they’re saying, “Hey, look, we’re putting a lot of money in this. We know that Ted Lasso, Shrinking, we’ve got big names, but we do wanna go international. We see what Amazon’s doing, and we wanna do it, but we’re gonna do it the Apple way. To do that, that means we need you guys to be on board with us and we need to pay you correctly.” It is an internal problem with AMPTP, I truly believe, that is the biggest issue at this table. What’s happening is that the very straightforward, “Hey, we could be making all this money together internationally,” is getting lost in all of this, “Oh my God, AI. Oh my God, you’re not doing…” This could have been such a straightforward residuals, “We’re gonna make all this money on international. There’s enough to go around.” Sorry, I get really worked up about this.

Darren Sumner:
The residuals is the other thing I wanted to ask you about, to kind of drill down into the weeds a little bit. The other thing that I’ve been thinking about is the fact that for a lot of the shows on streaming, they don’t report their numbers. A lot of the residuals for traditional broadcast and syndication television are based in some manner on performance. The money that actors make or the writer or a director.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s part of the negotiation, and just so you guys know, that’s why Netflix walked away the first time. Netflix said, “We don’t wanna reveal what our streaming revenues are, let alone gross net. We just don’t wanna reveal what our revenues are.” Now, my understanding is that everybody else, Amazon included, was willing to find a happy medium to this. In other words, “We’ll reveal to exec committees who make these decisions, just like any representative union, to WGA and SAG-AFTRA, but we don’t wanna put it out there publicly.” As a marketing exec, I find that really frustrating, but that’s what some of the decisions at the table had come to, and Netflix said no. I know that for a fact for WGA, rumor had it that they were the ones that walked away from the federal mediation as well, with SAG-AFTRA. I don’t know if that’s true or if that was just sour grapes from some of the people that I was talking to, but the two people that I talked to don’t know each other and it was the same message, which is, there were some people at this table who were willing on the streamer side to budge on this, and Netflix was not. Again, that part is speculation about SAG-AFTRA. The weeds on this, again, not terribly complex if you boil it down. Here’s what you make. Here’s what you put in. Streamers are spending an enormous amount of money on production, which means your revenue really doesn’t count. Therefore, if you were just being honest about this and pragmatic about it, you could very legitimately come to the table and say, “Hey, guys, we really put a lot of money from 2018 to now, over six billion a year, into production, and we’re not making that amount of, let alone gross, certainly not net after all that, so we really can’t promise streaming revenues and residuals until we get this figured out.” That would’ve been an honest conversation, but that’s not what’s happening. Instead, it’s this very victim mentality of, “We had to lay all these people off.” Of course, all of SAG-AFTRA and WGA are like, “Yeah, we know. You laid us off.” The streamers and the studios are like, “We had to contract everybody and we operated at a loss last year.” No, you operated at a loss year over year from COVID, not necessarily from 2018, 2019. Yes, still had some numbers that were off, but if you had continued the way you had planned with your five-year plan from 2018, which they all had five-year plans from those union negotiations, then this would still be considered a successful year over year. It all boils down to, and again, this is my opinion now. I don’t think that AMPTP is being pragmatic, I don’t think that they’re being honest at the table and I don’t think from the SAG-AFTRA, WGA point of view that this is complicated or asking a lot. It isn’t. It’s asking for fair living wages, which is what they don’t have right now, that’s it. It is not more complicated. All the rest of this discussion and arguments and victimization and they said, she said, he said, whatever, it really isn’t pertinent. It’s, from my understanding, it is AMPTP that is 100% obstructing.

David Read:
How long could you see this going on? John Gajdecki said he’s looking at potentially no work till December in visual effects.

Jenny Stiven:
Worst-case scenario, and of course, each of these effects for longer than when it ends. It means we’re looking at from whenever this ends, it’s a six-month to two-year problem depending upon what part of the industry you’re in. If you’re in post-production-

David Read:
‘Cause they’ve gotta spin back up.

Jenny Stiven:
Up until SAG-AFTRA, most productions, producers, and execs could still be doing negotiations. Right now, all execs and producers can do is focus on getting these two strikes resolved. They need to keep the business going. They’ll deal with what already exists, what’s already in the can, what can they negotiate internationally. But a negotiation and a deal that I was involved with over the past three months has just stopped, so none of that’s gonna keep going. Worst-case scenario, 2024, first quarter. If AMPTP does what it says it’s gonna do, which I don’t think they will, but if they did, and they refuse to even negotiate and take a summer break until October, it takes three months and then you’ve got holidays. I’m praying that’s not what happens. I think best-case scenario is September, October, and that’s if everybody can convince the holdouts. AMPTP’s attitude was so bad at this federal mediation, where even the federal mediators have been quoted as saying, “I couldn’t find a way through this.” SAG-AFTRA and WGA are pissed, rightly so. They were willing to come back to the table, try to get it done by Wednesday, July 12th, nothing, and in fact, were offered, Darren, to your point, the one-day scan BS. While I’d love to see September, October, I don’t think that’s gonna happen unless there’s a miracle and somebody somewhere, like it’s happened before, steps in and convinces the holdouts on the AMPTP side, “It is in your best interest to get this done,” and then convinces SAG-AFTRA and WGA, “Don’t hold onto your anger,” because that’s the danger right now. Legitimately, they have it.

David Read:
We’re really good at doing that now. I think, looking at everything that we’ve been dealing with as cultures in this culture war, quote-unquote, I think it’s really interesting that it’s now extended into this space between these sides who are dealing with one another and it’s so much easier and personally satisfying to go, “No. Screw you. We’re not gonna sit down and talk to you. You are the other. You are the enemy now because of what you said.”

Jenny Stiven:
“You’re the big bad.” AMPTP, let’s be honest, is, to your point, David, earlier, a really easy big bad because they are truly, factually throwing shit out there that is insane for anybody. I don’t care if you’re in a union or not, if you’re a worker, if you’re management. When I saw some interviews on CNBC where they were just shaking their head going, “What is going on? This is not complicated. Do this, do this, do this.” Every other business in the world knows how to negotiate with unions. The AFL-CIO head literally was shaking his, or maybe her, head at a press conference in Chicago saying, “I’m really confused as to why this got to this point when we’re not asking for anything outside of what you’d give to your hospitality workers, to any tourism unions.” It really is easy to make them the big bad evil, but this isn’t gonna work. If we back ourselves in a corner and we get so angry about how they’ve acted and did not act in good faith so far for the past six months, OK, but that’s not gonna get you to the end result. The part that scares me is that there is no such thing as compromise anymore. It’s my way or the highway; my point or nothing. I’m just not sure where that leaves us because the entertainment industry is made up of over 134 supplemental industries and these are just two, writers and actors, and it is affecting a domino effect of every single one of those other industries. I’m not saying that they’re not right, they are, but we need to be able to compromise. That’s what negotiating is.

Darren Sumner:
My other worry here is that because of the way the industry is structured now with streaming and with so much content already banked and how easy it is to go pull stuff internationally and even US audiences are becoming more and more friendly to international production of subtitled or dubbed shows, like Dark on Netflix. There’s so much already in the pipeline, how long is it gonna take for AMPTP to feel the squeeze of a strike, of a work stoppage? In the olden days it was the networks struggling to get eyeballs and so they’re struggling with their ad dollars as of the new fall season? People aren’t happy with what they’re putting on the air, but now is it…

Jenny Stiven:
Broadcast already is.

Darren Sumner:
…a year and a half before they even feel the squeeze of the audience, unsubscribing from the service?

Jenny Stiven:
It’s weird, though. Like you said earlier, streamers are new to this negotiation game. Broadcast has already felt the squeeze; they’re screwed. Up fronts basically didn’t happen in May. Up fronts are where ad revenues, advertising time is sold, just like Super Bowl, but it’s for all the new shows that are coming on broadcast, whether it’s in the fall, the spring, whatever. There are also digital up fronts, which was for streamers. None of that happened the way it should have happened. As you saw with Netflix, one of the big business model changes has been to try to make streamers ad-supported, so AOD. It’s video on demand, subscription on demand, or ad-supported.

David Read:
A variety.

Jenny Stiven:
They’re all struggling to find what works best, and of course, as we all know, it’s a combination of those things. Ad-supported is already affected, hugely affected, because massive corporations who would be pouring money into some of these new productions are holding back because they don’t know what’s gonna happen. Anything that was slated for fall, unless it already had a commitment and in the can, Darren, to your point, they’re screwed. Which means most broadcast networks are gonna switch over to reality television, are gonna switch over to anything that’s, quote-unquote, unscripted. Animation also, by the way, the Animation Guild has been asked to strike in support and they have not decided. I may be behind, that was as of two days ago. Which means you could be seeing new animated shows, like we already are seeing. Vox Machina and Love, Death & Robots, these are all very successful shows.

David Read:
Brilliant.

Jenny Stiven:
While we lost Prodigy, Lower Decks is still very popular. I think that in general you’re gonna see a lot of reality and animation and we’re gonna see that for up to two years after the strike ends. You won’t see new scripted domestic product, unless it was already in the can. That’s gonna be confusing. How do we know? Unless you’re looking it up on belowthelineandabovetheline.com, you don’t know what’s in the can, shot already, not shot.

Darren Sumner:
What about the average Netflix subscriber? How long is it gonna take for them to get bored with what’s being put out?

Jenny Stiven:
This is where Amazon is ahead, because they aggregated. They’ve got AMC+, they’ve got CBS, they’ve got Paramount+. They aggregated and did deals like they were an old cable aggregator, where they took all the different channels, not just their own, and offer them at some, in some cases, discounted prices. Amazon will do better because they’ve aggregated this. As soon as those start falling off, you see people won’t be actually adding those channels to their Amazon Prime subscription, then Amazon’s gonna be hit really hard. Disney already has been. I don’t know what Disney’s gonna do. I know Iger’s got a plan, I know that he wants to cut a lot more jobs. I don’t think that’s the answer. This is my opinion. I think it’s gonna be down to the wire. Who loses the most amount of money, the SAG-AFTRA actors, the writers, or the studios? Whoever feels the Damocles sword lowering faster is gonna be the one that basically blinks at the table. In my perfect world, they come to the table, they find compromises together on these. Maybe there’s a little bit less percentage on the pension, a little bit less percentage on the residuals, but the residuals contract is for a longer period of time. There are really, really straightforward answers. I keep coming back to this is not complex. If they don’t wanna do a 20% residual, then 10% residual, but it’s over a longer period of time. Those go down over time. That’s just a standard residual. You get the most amount in those first five years and then it goes down after that pretty drastically. Those are all super, super easy things you can negotiate with people. One thing I wanna bring up. I was listening to John Rocha and Mike Vogel, who are over on Geek Buddies, and they said something really interesting. This strike is going to bring up, or highlight, the burnout in what could be considered the end of the quote-unquote “Gold Rush” of cinematic universes and requels for franchises.

David Read:
Requels?

Jenny Stiven:
Requels, meaning Star Wars retelling the same types of stories over and over and over again. Not that they’re not gonna be successful, but there’s a law of diminishing returns to these. What was fascinating, and I had talked to John afterwards about this, is that they didn’t talk about Stargate. This is what Mike Vogel said, and this was specifically as pertains to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny or, shoot, he had another one that he gave as an example. “We love these franchises, but we need you to do something new, not the same thing over and over and over and over again, because the law of diminishing returns for fans means that we don’t feel like you’re listening to us.” I found that fascinating and they’re talking about this specifically to the strike. What’s gonna happen is Amazon and Netflix and Apple in particular are gonna go out and find international shows that are radically different from what we’re used to seeing. They will be new franchises that we’ve never seen before and are those going to replace our beloved fan franchises? There are massively popular sci-fi in Japan and Asia that we don’t even know about. Are those going to start to replace, or even worse, does that mean that they’re going to put on hold the franchises that we’re currently about to announce, i.e. Stargate? I don’t know if that’s what we wanted to get into, but I found that fascinating. I don’t know if I agree with that opinion, but it is counter to every poll that you guys have done, that SciTrek did, that Popcast guys did. All of those polls say that Stargate fans want something that is reflective of SG-1, SGA, or even SGU finishing it. What they don’t want is some brand-new film that starts over. This would be completely counter to that, and Mike Vogel’s an exec; he’s a showrunner. This would be a completely counter way of thinking of it and I wonder if that isn’t where Amazon’s coming from in the fact that Jen Salke has been adamant that she wants a film to start it and then she wants to hand it over to Nick Pepper to be a series. I’m not sure if those two fan conclusions and business industry conclusions aren’t gonna go head-to-head and I don’t want fans to lose out. I found that to be a fascinating observation about how the strike could affect franchises.

David Read:
What do you think about that, Darren?

Darren Sumner:
We’re already seeing it to a degree in adaptations of content that was originally IP that was created elsewhere. I’m thinking of One Piece. I’m thinking of stuff like that that has its roots in manga or other parts of the world, other forms of media. Makes sense. It’s terrifying. We’ve been living in this era for how many years now of Hollywood recycling stuff. I don’t know when it started. Maybe it started with the Star Wars prequels in ’99. People really started getting vocal about Hollywood doesn’t have any original ideas. They’re just cashing in on the familiar. That seems like that doesn’t go away.

Jenny Stiven:
No, that’s a consistent cycle. We all know that as storytellers and as entertainment industry. All three of us are diehard entertainment nerds in terms of the history of entertainment industry. That’s a cycle. You heard the same thing in the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’70s. In the ’80s, we had all the big blockbusters and then we were all regurgitating in the ’90s those. That’s why you had the rise of all the independent production studios; because they were tired of all those big blockbusters in the ’80s. That was the pendulum, the reaction to. I think we’ll see the same thing with some of what we’re seeing already with blockchain film industry and production, which is a whole ‘nother conversation because they are not particularly affected by this strike right now.

Darren Sumner:
The ones that make the big impact are like The Matrix. My point is, as great as it will be to get new IP to enjoy, it’s hard to imagine studios going away from the cash cows of, “Let’s make another Star Wars. Let’s make another Star Trek.”

David Read:
The thing that blew me away was the statistic that I read about The Rings of Power. Jenny, you may feel free to keep me in my lane here. This is a series that is gonna be a billion dollars amortized over five years. The first season completion rate, series completion rate, i.e. how many people, the percentage of people who watched to the last episode through the show, was 37%. People didn’t like it.

Darren Sumner:
I have no idea how that compares to other shows on the platform.

David Read:
This is the company that has Stargate in its hands. The other thing that I heard was there was a report that was generated about what the Amazon viewers were watching and which shows were percolating to the top first. Because they featured certain undesirable intersectional DEI perspectives, they literally were like, “OK, we’re just gonna ignore this and create more of what we want because we think that this is better for society.” Is that fair, Jenny?

Jenny Stiven:
I think it is fair to a certain degree. Absolutely. I think the problem right now is that the DEI in general is being led to a large degree by pop culture, because that’s how it always happens. That doesn’t mean that your viewership is there yet. Sometimes there’s an inequity in the creative pushing the envelope, pushing the edges, and the viewership saying, “Eh, I’m really not there yet.” That can be, unfortunately in our society right now, a very radical reaction to that as opposed to just walking away with your money. I think that you are accurate in the sense that, internally, what Amazon’s looking at is, is it a good story? Rings of Power was approved before Jen Salke and Nick Pepper came on board. Citadel was approved before Jen Salke and Nick Pepper came on board. I think what we wanna look at is, is that business model that they’re trying to do with Citadel, isn’t that interesting? From a Stargate franchise perspective, I would love if they did that. That would be spot on.

David Read:
Put the gate on the moon and have, following an international team, every week.

Jenny Stiven:
International team and have different countries like Germany or Japan.

David Read:
All have their own units

Jenny Stiven:
Territories that were huge fans and still have a very strong base.

David Read:
I would watch them all, as long as they’re subtitled

Jenny Stiven:
It’d be fun. Can you imagine how cool that would be? They all get together for one big reunion on an international space station.

David Read:
Or have movies with all of them together.

Jenny Stiven:
It’d be so cool. I know that that’s all being batted around. I think the biggest concern right now is where does everything go because we’re in a suspended animation right now. It’s SGU in the very last episode. Darren, I agree with you 100%. I am so thankful they didn’t make a Stargate announcement. I am so thankful that they hadn’t resolved their internal issues. I don’t know if they’re still planning to do that, but my guess is with SAG-AFTRA, they’re gonna put it on hold. I know that there was a push when it was just WGA, but all my sources have gone radio silent as of last week and I totally get it. I totally understand. I’m hoping that the MGM side, like Michael Wright, the people who are super pro-Stargate have made some inroads and said, “Now is not the time.” Now, here’s the great news. People on the Amazon side were also very reticent, not all of them, to make an announcement. You had people on both MGM and Amazon going, “Let’s do it, let’s do it at San Diego Comic-Con.” Obviously, that’s not gonna happen. Having that on hold maybe allows for some internal contemplation and hopefully more creative, balanced heads to prevail. I’m always gonna be the optimist. Even if I’m wrong at the end, I’d rather be the optimist that those more creative heads will prevail and say, “OK, look. Michael Wright’s been banging this drum. He’s been telling us we need to, at minimum, bring in Brad Wright as a consultant.” Doesn’t mean that we’re gonna do SG-1, but just have him there as a consultant so that there is a transitional thread that gets pulled through. OK, cool. Maybe they’ll listen to that. I know that Jen Salke is hardcore to do a film. My own personal opinion, I don’t think that’s the right way to do it, and here’s why. Films are losing an enormous amount of money and every time they try to start a new franchise with a film, there is an immediate cliff drop-off to try to spend the money to continue that franchise. Now, I know that what Jen Salke was trying to plan was a film into a series, but that is doubly expensive. However, if she is using The Citadel as an example in a business model, you could do that. For instance, Ciudad de la Luz, which is a production company at Alicante in Spain that Priscilla’s involved in, they are committing $56 billion, I think, over five years to build their culture and pop culture as an export internally and to export it. Ciudad de la Luz is a production company that was state-owned, made super famous Spanish films for years and years and years, fell into disrepair and has now had this influx and it’s gorgeous. It is state of the art. Maybe what you do is you partner with somebody like that, and then you look at… Shoot, I’m blanking on the one that’s outside of Okinawa in Japan. There’s another production company there doing the same thing and then there’s Thailand, who is begging for people to come and film there.

David Read:
Chikkimedia?

Jenny Stiven:
Pardon me?

David Read:
Chikkimedia?

Jenny Stiven:
Yes.

David Read:
Sorry.

Jenny Stiven:
You put these deals together that make Stargate genuinely global. How amazing would that be if we had the Citadel business model applied to Stargate franchise?

David Read:
I’m just now hearing about this. With Citadel, I think this is a great idea.

Jenny Stiven:
I think it’d be amazing. It goes back to Mike Vogel’s point, which is not that we don’t want these franchises. We still want Star Wars, Indiana Jones, whatever, but give us something new about that franchise that re-energizes us. This would re-energize us. First of all, it could literally answer everybody’s bitching about, “OK, please, somebody just make a decision about this. Do something.” It could answer everybody’s demands. Jen Salke could have a movie, Nick Pepper could have his series, the fans could have something that is not just referential but involves SG-1, SGA, SGU, and then there’s something new. Oh my God, would that be amazing.

David Read:
You got an MCU thing going on with Disney+ and theatrically.

Darren Sumner:
That would be Christmas for us but it would take a large investment, as you say. Large investments have to be amortized some way and/or with multiple revenue streams. This is how Stargate became such a mega franchise for MGM back in the day. It had all these different revenue streams even before DVD. Sell it internationally, sell it into syndication.

Jenny Stiven:
Think about the licensing and merchandising that you could have internationally, which again, globally is a bigger number than domestically. My God. Think about looking behind you, David, looking behind you, Darren. Collectibles. The opportunity for collectibles would be enormous because you would have all these different siloed stories that were being told, but they all tie together. Oh my God. I’m sorry, I get really excited about that. I hope that that’s what could happen. I would take some version of that even, but we gotta get the strike done first and the only way that happens is if everybody comes to the table willing to negotiate.

David Read:
Comic-Con is next week.

Jenny Stiven:
Yes, it is.

David Read:
I was gonna be going. I had work commitments otherwise that prevented me, and then lo and behold, SAG-AFTRA pulled the plug, told them no promotion of any kind basically. Comic-Con’s gonna be very back to basics this year, I think. What about Comic-Con are you guys thinking about in terms of the future and fan appearances in general?

Darren Sumner:
The point that I wanna make sure is on everybody’s radar, ’cause this affects fans immediately, not just because of content that we wanna watch, but folks who turn up for these. Folks plan for years and save their money.

David Read:
Correct.

Darren Sumner:
Maybe they’re gonna go to Dragon Con over Labor Day weekend. Holly’s gonna be there and Jewel’s gonna be there and David Nykl is gonna be there. Now it’s up in the air which actors are gonna attend which events. I think at the end of the day, it’s gonna be up to the actors, just as it was for Tony’s appearance on Dial the Gate, to decide what works for them and what they’re comfortable with. But Jenny, correct me if I’m wrong, my interpretation of the guidance from SAG-AFTRA is, the actors are not to do anything that is promotional for something that the studio is currently trying to sell. But if an actor wants to go to an event on their own, and meet fans and sign autographs and not promote the next project, then the actor’s free to do that. Is that right?

Jenny Stiven:
Yeah. I’m so glad you brought this up. I’ll send this to you guys. This was a codicil that was added to the strike order. No promotion of work under, to your point, Darren, TV theatrical contracts. That means panels, premiere screenings, award shows, conventions, fan expos, festivals, podcast appearance, and social media promotion. However, and this is the part that’s a gray area. While you are not allowed to do any kind of promotional for something that you are currently under contract for against a struck company, what becomes gray is can you talk about a previous project with that struck company? Basically, SAG and WGA, but SAG more, is strongly asking flat out, “Please don’t go to any cons.”

David Read:
I wouldn’t take the risk. To be put on “so and so went to such and such.” Everyone would dog pile. No way. Regardless of the reasons.

Jenny Stiven:
I found it a bit bullying on SAG’s part. I had a friend of mine who’s SAG-AFTRA explain to me, the gray area is tough and if SAG is not super black and white about this then what ends up happening is a non-union actor who wants to apply for SAG-AFTRA goes to make some money at a con because that’s their major revenue right now and they talk about a production that they were a day actor on that is a struck company production, they can be denied SAG-AFTRA membership.

Darren Sumner:
Wow.

Jenny Stiven:
We have a lot of friends who write in the comic book graphic novel industry who write screenplays. If they promote something in passing at a panel that they are doing for a comic book that refers to or references a production that they’re working on or had worked on against a struck company, they can be fined or kicked out. Or if they’re not WGA and they’ve got a pending membership, it would be denied.

David Read:
Because it’s the equivalent of crossing the picket line.

Jenny Stiven:
It is.

David Read:
Even if you weren’t a part of that group at that time.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s very black and white and I find it a bit exclusionary and inclusionary at the same time, where if you’re not part of the in-group, you’re screwed. But I do understand. What they’re trying to say is, “Six months from now, we get it, but right now…” San Diego Comic-Con is the third largest con in the world and everybody goes there to make their announcements. We can’t afford to have any slip-ups; it has to be solidarity. Having said that, I’m at Comic-Con this year. Luckily, while I lost two projects that are not lost, but they’re on hold, that were in development, two of my clients are authors, sci-fi authors and fantasy authors. I’m talking to a whole bunch of people in comic books, in cosplay, in collectibles, in small-press publishing. They are giddy as hell because what they’re saying is, “It has been years.” The November special edition in 2021 that we did at San Diego Comic-Con, it will be like that because nobody came, I think, except Warner Brothers. It’s literally gonna be a spotlight on all of these comic book publishers, some of whom weren’t gonna come who are gonna come, like AfterShock Publishing is now gonna be there. These guys are being picked up and panels that were denied are now being quickly called upon to fill in because yesterday, I think it was something like 12 major panels canceled that were TV panels. TV was still coming even though a bunch of film wasn’t coming with the WGA strike.

David Read:
Hall H is going to be a ghost town if they don’t do something to fill them in.

Jenny Stiven:
So, they don’t do Hall H. OK. So what? So, we’ve got Ballroom 20, Ballroom 6. I’m going to Dragon Con as well. You talk to Dragon Con, and I love talking Dragon Con folks. It’s so Southern. Literally, I could picture this on the phone. I talked to them yesterday. Total shrug, like, “OK.”

David Read:
They’re for the fans anyway.

Jenny Stiven:
All the furries are gonna show up, so who cares? It’s all gonna be cosplay. Nobody’s gonna be worried about this. I think what’s gonna be fun about Comic-Con is that it’s gonna have amazing cosplayers and small press and comic book and writers and artists who are finally gonna get a break and they’re gonna have something to show that gets featured and highlighted and actually, there’s room amongst the white noise. Comic-Con is still sold out. The 140,000 tickets or something like that were completely sold out as of a month ago. For everybody or anybody who is spending their life savings to get here, I get it that you are crushed if you were counting on certain panels or activations outside, which aren’t gonna happen necessarily now, about shows or films or franchises that you thought you were gonna be able to be a part of. There are activations that are gonna happen outside that are cosplay and comic book and manga and animation. All of those things are gonna be exciting and they’re gonna be so happy to see you. The swag giveaway is gonna be nuts because everybody’s gonna be so excited to see fans come and be there. Same with Dragon Con. I think the big question is, ’cause I’m doing a project, David, with Paul and Gary and those guys. It’s gonna come down to is this crossing the line or not? For me, my biggest question is gonna be, if there are picket lines at Comic-Con, I’m not gonna cross the line. I don’t know what I’m gonna do if that happens, because I would have to cancel a lot. I can get an, shoot, what’s it called, when SAG and WGA give a…

Darren Sumner:
Exemption?

Jenny Stiven:
Exemption. I can get an exemption because all my clients right now are authors and comic book author and writers.

David Read:
But you still wanna be transparent.

Jenny Stiven:
Yeah, pretty much. I wanna carry a big sign that says, “I’m going in for comic books and collectibles. I’m not doing anything that’s TV or film or screen actors or writers related.” I don’t know how we’re gonna handle that.

Darren Sumner:
This is happening and SAG is already trying to be as clear as they can with the exceptions that are out there. There are news broadcasters who hold SAG cards. There are American actors filming projects in Britain. Those productions are under different contracts; they don’t have a contract with SAG.

David Read:
Some of them are still going.

Darren Sumner:
They’re allowed to continue to film and you’re given a little sign in your car as you’re driving onto the lot and maybe make space for a certain entrance point through the picket line, where the sign in your car specifies “I’m doing this under this other contract.”

Jenny Stiven:
That’s what I had in 2008. I think the problem here is 2008, while insane, was just the Writers Guild. This time, you don’t drive into Comic-Con, you’re walking in. I literally am thinking about making a sign that says, “This is what I’m here for,” because I know people are gonna be there picketing. It’s gonna happen. If it’s not here, it’ll definitely be at Dragon Con.

David Read:
I think that it’s interesting. I lived in the Third World for the better part of a year. I watched them with all their smartphones consuming all of our media. As the world moves toward egalitarianism, tens of thousands are brought onto the electricity grid every single day. This is the result of the rising tide. These other countries are gonna come online and they’re gonna have stories that they want to tell. I think that Squid Game is one of the greater examples to it. Damon Lindelof, the people behind Game of Thrones, they’re doing Three Body Problem. David Benioff and DB Weiss, they’re doing The Three Body Problem, which is a Chinese book series. After I saw the trailer, I looked at it, I read into the books, I’m like, “This is really cool.”

Jenny Stiven:
It’s very good.

David Read:
We’re getting this exposure into all of these other countries. Then you pan back to us, fat and sassy soft Americans, and we’re surprised when a lot of these other companies are coming online over here. They have new ideas. See ya, we’re gonna go support them. This is the result of that and it’s only going to continue as more of the world becomes more online.

Jenny Stiven:
Absolutely. The two productions of mine, one of them may be able to move forward if we go internationally. Obviously, we wanna be very careful, because we don’t want to in any manner, shape, or form as an American group, development group, do any work that is counter to the strike. But we can certainly do development. We can do time and look at budgets and how does it work and who would we go to and what partners would we work with in country and territory. All of that pre-production can be done without crossing a picket line. To your point, this had already started during COVID. Actually, this had already started in the late 2010s. In terms of actual production, this is going to force the issue. Again, it’s the pragmatism. That’s what gobsmacks me; AMPTP is acting as if they’re the only people in the world that can possibly do this. Considering that three of those companies rely massively on international product, essentially, it seems remarkably naive, unless that’s how they’re using it as negotiating leverage: “we don’t need you. We have all of this.” That brings up something that we should talk about at a later date: fairness and equity in international entertainment. Most of these other countries make massively less than the American Hollywood infrastructure does. What’s gonna happen, that we just have Apple with Chinese child labor, but we’ve used that business template for Hollywood exports and imports? Probably. I know SAG-AFTRA has brought that up and said, “Hey, cool that you’re gonna go do this international work, but are you paying attention to child labor laws? Are you paying attention to how many hours can somebody over 18 be on a set? Do you have the safety issues?” Considering what just happened on Rust with Alec Baldwin and that’s in an industry that has massive safety infrastructure. These do not. A lot of the other industries are very fast, blow through it, and do not have safety and security measures. All of those things are gonna come up and SAG’s already brought it up.

David Read:
Which show is it that Dean Devlin has that’s shooting in the Philippines?

Jenny Stiven:
The Ark?

David Read:
No, it’s not The Ark. That’s elsewhere. It’s his other show.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s another one. The other one. He just wrote about.

David Read:
They’re gonna be prepared to accept far less pay and with a smile on their face, than anyone who would have to pay for their multi-bedroom, multi-story homes over here.

Jenny Stiven:
The living wage here is higher, obviously, even for somebody that is middle of the road or just entering. Cost of living here is much, much higher.

David Read:
Darren?

Darren Sumner:
It’s one thing for studios to take advantage of the strength of the American dollar relative to, say, shooting in Vancouver. MGM could get more for its dollar, shooting. They shot everything up there. They shot Stargate, they shot The Outer Limits, they shot…

David Read:
Jeremiah.

Jenny Stiven:
CW, its entire Arrowverse there.

David Read:
It’s visual-effects-heavy and they can pull off a lot with that exchange rate.

Darren Sumner:
So, it’s one thing to take advantage of the exchange rate and the strength of the American dollar, but when you’re talking about going to a much poorer country where you could potentially do damage to the economy.

David Read:
I just read the Peter Jackson biography and how he brought Weta Digital online where they could pay for shots to be made at a fraction of the cost that ILM could. Now they’re a global player, for crying out loud. That’s how these things come online. I wanna turn to some fan questions here.

Jenny Stiven:
Hi, everybody.

David Read:
George Turner, “Jenny, who would be policing the cons for the union?”

Jenny Stiven:
Who would be what?

David Read:
Who would be policing the cons for the unions?

Jenny Stiven:
Local strike captains. Every major city who has production has a strike captain that’s in charge of it. I’m pretty sure the L.A. one is also in charge of San Diego, but maybe not. Also, in some of the areas, there are actual con strike captains or people that are con representatives for the bigger cons. Look, I don’t think they’re gonna go crazy on this, because they know the blowback for fans would be huge. I would be surprised if there aren’t representatives here handing out information about what the strike is about. “Please, as a fan, do not support the following productions, or buy collectibles that support the following licensing and merchandising of a struck studio.” If I were the strike captain, I would make sure I had a street team down here that was super knowledgeable, super friendly, and fans themselves.

David Read:
Friendly and prepared to educate.

Darren Sumner:
Passing on information, more than trying to prevent people from entering the doors.

Jenny Stiven:
I don’t know. I’ll tell you guys how it goes.

David Read:
Yes, please. Backup Beast has an interesting one. “To me, striking over AI issues seems unwise. Such a move does nothing but encourage them to use AI while they have no other option, does it not?” In a couple more years, you won’t even be able to tell the difference on a lot of this stuff, compared to where we were with Laurence two years ago to now, imagine two years from now.

Jenny Stiven:
Look, I get that question, but no, it’s a union’s job to hold that line. What usually happens for most unions in any industry is that they’re always working behind the curve because they’re reacting as opposed to proactively getting ahead of something happening. That’s almost always what happens. In this case, no. From a business model standpoint as well, as far as the companies, the studios, the streamers are concerned, there has to be some sort of business model infrastructure for it. If there is a business model infrastructure, then you have to have worker support that says, “How do we protect the workers?” Especially in creative industries, where their creative could be abused. I completely hear what you’re saying because, as an internet libertarian, you want that to grow, you want it to find its way, you want it to be egalitarian. You want it to be free to find its way to the most creative people in the world. The problem with that is a lot of creative people in the world, in this industry, would not just get bypassed, but their work would be abused. So, it’s protection.

David Read:
It reminds me of that bumper sticker from, during Battlestar Galactica’s run, “Don’t blame me, I voted for Roslin, but I welcome our new Cylon overlords.”

Jenny Stiven:
It’s true. That’s exactly right.

David Read:
Trenton Darnell, “What other unions are coming up for another negotiation and which of these may follow suit with SAG and WGA?”

Jenny Stiven:
Animation Guild for sure and IATSE. Ironically enough, Teamsters. I think Teamsters’ contract is up in early 2024.

David Read:
They make the whole thing go round, man. You have no Teamsters, you’re in trouble.

Jenny Stiven:
I love the Teamsters unions. They were super good to me when I was first starting out in TV production. As the only girl and then the only woman in a lot of these that I was working early on, those guys protected me like crazy. But again, that’s part of make friends with the people that can protect you. The Teamsters have a really, really good infrastructure. They rarely go on strike. You’ll find that the Teamsters unions that are connected to mass transportation, to infrastructure, city infrastructure, they go on strike more often. For us in the Hollywood, people are pretty pragmatic about Teamsters. You’re not gonna get anything done if you don’t negotiate with your Teamsters. All mob jokes aside, they’ve got the best infrastructure in terms of negotiating their contracts. They’re very pragmatic. They are ready months and months and months in advance. IATSE’s the same. IATSE represents anybody that’s considered below the line. It’s technical, it’s post-production a lot of times depending upon where you fall in the post-production. Unfortunately, VFX, SFX, and you can talk to Bam Bam about this and Mark Savela, do not have a union. There’s been a huge push recently to have a VFX union and to have essentially a special effects union.

David Read:
I didn’t know that.

Jenny Stiven:
There’s no union for them. Digital, we don’t have a union. I used to be IATSE. IATSE very politely asked me to leave when I went full-time digital, because it wasn’t considered technical. I didn’t really get that at the time, argued it, brought my case, appealed it. Nope. I think IATSE is probably the next step, if I remember correctly. Again, I don’t see IATSE having a problem. They are 100% in support. They’ve been on the picket lines. They’re gonna be affected probably the most, because of that 100 and whatever I was telling you supplemental industries, IATSE covers the most amount of those. Then you’ve also got craft workers, you’ve got all the rest. Then you’ve got voice actors and Animation Guild. Those four; voice actors, animation, IATSE and Teamsters, I think I’m forgetting somebody. The hospitality, the craft workers, they always negotiate pretty fast. I think the biggest problem is gonna be if any of those start coming up for pre-negotiations, ’cause you always wanna start early, while everybody else is still on strike, IATSE and the rest will feel pretty obligated to stay in solidarity frankly.

David Read:
Hold the line. Wow. So, it could just decelerate even more. Tracy, out of curiosity, is there anything that we can do as a community to help support the actors and the writers? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this, Jenny.

Jenny Stiven:
Right now there is a discussion internally with the SAG, with the regional captains, SAG-AFTRA and WGA, about asking fans to not go to the movies and to quit their subscriptions. That is not something officially that has come out. That is an internal discussion about whether or not that’s gonna happen. There are several unions who are in solidarity that are outside the Hollywood infrastructure who are thinking about doing their own solidarity type of, “we’re gonna pause our subscriptions to certain ones that we know are being troublemakers and problematic.” Currently I know that there is a push to not go to the movies, because that’s the one that’s an immediate box office revenue impact.

David Read:
People haven’t been anyway. The numbers for these tentpole films, when you include advertising, have been abysmal.

Jenny Stiven:
Barbie, Oppenheimer, Mission Impossible, and then the August, which are usually B movies, but those make up a bulk of their revenue. I’m not advocating for anything in that area until I hear from the strike captains, what they’re really asking for. Would that hurt them? I don’t wanna personally do anything or advocate for anything in that area. What I would say, find on social media, of the franchises, shows, comic books that you like, find the writers and the actors that you like and you already follow and make sure that you are reposting or retweeting or liking and commenting what they’re talking about on social media. While they cannot promote their current projects, they are free to talk about the strike. They can talk personally about how it’s affecting them. That social media has a much bigger impact than anybody knows on AMPTP. One of the reasons that Variety article about the anonymous producer saying that they’re just gonna starve out the writers and actors till October, it had such an enormous blowback on AMPTP, and by the way, affected the SAG last-minute federal mediation because social fans went nuts over that. While a lot of times social is toxic and I wouldn’t recommend it, in this case, find the writers, find the actors that you respect in the franchises and shows that you love, and make sure that you are commenting, liking, retweeting, reposting what they’re talking about. If you are an influencer, if you are a social influencer, if you are on anything that is a hashtag on TikTok that is currently trending, I ask that you make content that is in support of the strikes and show solidarity. If you are part of an existing union in an outside industry, I ask that you please make content that supports and is in solidarity. It’s something super simple like replace your profile picture. It is making a TikTok video that says, “Hey, I didn’t know about this, but I just went and did a lot of research and I’m really interested in this aspect of what’s going on.” If you are a nascent writer, a fanfic writer, do some research because it will affect you eventually because authors are gonna be affected by this. Writers Guild East represents authors. This is a huge issue for anybody that is fanfic writer, looking to write screenplays, just looking to do something for fun. When the AI gets in there, I ask that anybody that is an artist or a designer or does fan art, please make sure that you are very clear about that you own your art. Make very clear that you understand and get that AI is popular, but you do not want your art reproduced or, worst case scenario, chopped up like a chop shop and reused for something else. Those are three ways that you can really do something active. Honestly, I ask everybody, please do your research; don’t repeat rumors. I try to be super clear about what’s speculation and rumor and what is actual fact. Rumors really hurt negotiations, especially if the producers see a particular groundswell in one direction or the other that could be based on something that’s untrue. Deadline, The Wrap are the two best. I don’t really rely on Variety and Hollywood Reporter anymore because they tend to be behind the curve. Deadline and The Wrap have some of the best up to the minute and they don’t report on something that isn’t factually verified by the negotiating committees.

David Read:
Darren, any final thoughts moving forward about how this is gonna move in terms of Stargate and everything else? Thank you again for writing your article. This would not have happened because I read it and I was like “We gotta sit down.”

Darren Sumner:
Thank you for that. Again, I wasn’t sure if I should publish it and I’m glad that I did. If for nothing else than to show the sort of support and solidarity that Jenny’s talking about. I think this is gonna take a while. This is gonna take a long time. As far as Stargate goes, we’ve been waiting a long time already, so it’s annoying as all get out, but…

David Read:
Business as usual for us.

Darren Sumner:
We’ve been waved off of the landing strip and we’re going back around for another loop. It’ll happen; Stargate’ll happen when it happens. I’m just like everybody else out there, looking for ways to support the talent. I guess what I would say in answer to the question is, in addition to everything that Jenny has talked about, I hope that people will see the real human beings who are struggling. This impacts a lot of people in really personal, tangible ways every single day. Just because maybe you don’t like the content that the entertainment industry is putting out right now, please avoid painting all writers and all actors as woke fat cats. People are struggling. Tens of thousands of people are gonna be struggling for a long time.

David Read:
Jenny, thank you for coming on as well.

Jenny Stiven:
Always.

David Read:
Any final thoughts?

Jenny Stiven:
I love talking with you guys.

David Read:
This has been a big deal for me to have you both here and to provide context, especially in the thick of it.

Jenny Stiven:
I think I’ve said everything that I want people to know about the strike and, like Darren said, to pay attention that there’s a lot of struggling that’s going on in this industry. It’s hard to see that when you have a lot of people that are billionaires in it. I want everybody to find those people that you can follow that are those real people. Secondly, as far as Stargate’s concerned, I’m always gonna say keep the candle going, keep the hope. That reminds me, I have to show you this, ’cause people on here are gonna die laughing. When we were doing Stargate Command at every damn con, this was specific to international communities. I kept saying, “I promise you, we’re gonna get to you. I know we only are in six countries. We’re working on it.” I just moved, and of course I found enough swag to choke a horse in the garage. I had forgotten that the guys had made for me this Stargate Command T-shirt. OK, super pretty. They had printed up just for me on the back, “We’re working on it.” I know it’s backwards.

David Read:
No, it’s correct.

Jenny Stiven:
I was laughing so hard when I found this the other day.

David Read:
I remember that.

Jenny Stiven:
I’m gonna wear it to Comic-Con. To that point, oddly, this strike could bode well because it puts a pause on the very contentious internal back and forth that MGM was having with Amazon, that Amazon was having internally. It was all very positive. They all wanna do it, it’s just that everybody wants to do it a different way and nobody can decide the best way to do it and who to go with. Mark Ferguson and Hawk Ostby I think are amazing, and they would be, I think, perfect people for this. But it doesn’t matter right now. What it gives everybody a chance to do is to step back. Hopefully, like I said, cooler heads prevail, and maybe we get a better business model in place for the franchise than what we were barreling down on this path where there was so much pressure on both MGM and Amazon to get not just Stargate, but these other franchises, catalog franchises out the door. It gives everybody a chance to hopefully be a little bit more creative in how they’re approaching it and maybe pay attention to the fans a little bit and listen to them. That’s my super optimistic, super califragilisticoptimistic view of how Stargate could benefit from this strike.

David Read:
Tracy says, “Thank you, Jenny, for the awesome answer to my question.”

Jenny Stiven:
Love you, Tracy.

Darren Sumner:
Meanwhile, if you wanna watch Stargate, I got news for you. There’s 354 episodes of Stargate right now that you can watch in the meantime. You guys know I’ve been watching with my kids.

David Read:
How’s that been going?

Darren Sumner:
It’s been so much fun. I love that they get angry at all the right spots.

Jenny Stiven:
And they react to it.

David Read:
You are so lucky that they love it. You are so fortunate.

Darren Sumner:
We finished SG-1, we watched “Ark of Truth,” we’re into Season Four of Atlantis now. They watched “Sunday,” and you know what they said? “What does Stargate have against their doctors?” The same thing that all of us said at the time. We’re into Season Four now. It’s a blast.

Jenny Stiven:
Isn’t that fun?

Darren Sumner:
Actually, I haven’t watched some of these episodes in over a decade.

David Read:
I think it’s easy to make generalizations and say that this is just gonna be awful for everything. But based on some of the information that I’ve heard today, I think that there’s an opportunity for the franchise to really spin-off into a new direction if a lot of these strategies continue to hold water. This whole thing with Citadel is all news to me. It could be a very fascinating business model to move forward with micro-series and movies for the franchise and maybe take it into a truly international direction.

Jenny Stiven:
It’d be so cool

David Read:
In the audience and on the screen, it’s compatible. It moves the story forward.

Jenny Stiven:
It’d be so cool

David Read:
Lunar-based Stargate all the way.

Jenny Stiven:
It’d be amazing. Hopefully I’ll have some more news on things like that later on this year after we get through the strikes.

David Read:
So, in your opinion, Jenny, we got a long way to go?

Jenny Stiven:
Look, at one point we thought the one in 2008 was gonna go for another two months and then they suddenly were able to come to a decision. I really can’t say. If everybody holds to the, “I’m exhausted and I don’t wanna do any negotiation,” in August, which is what I’m hearing, then we’re at least into September, October. If, however, they all say, “OK, you know what? We just gotta sit down and plough through this,” then we might get something earlier than that. I’m hearing worst case scenario, like I said, first quarter 2024. We don’t want that. That would be a massive economic problem. Los Angeles lost $1.1 billion in 2008.

David Read:
Wow.

Jenny Stiven:
That has a domino effect to all of California, sorry, I’m a Californian, and to the rest of the economic development in the United States. It doesn’t affect just Hollywood, it affects our tourism, our real estate, our biotech, our aerospace. It all becomes, unfortunately, tied up together.

Darren Sumner:
It’s not just about new episodes of your favorite shows; entertainment’s a big industry. It has ripple effects.

David Read:
That’s it.

Jenny Stiven:
We’re gonna have a lot of people losing jobs very, very quickly that are in the “supplemental industries,” which I always found very insulting. They’re gonna lose jobs within the next 30 days, unfortunately, ’cause a lot of those contracts are three-month, six-month contracts based on production and all those productions are shut down.

David Read:
How many of those weren’t working during COVID anyway, and now this one, you have to be a glutton for punishment to come away from this smiling.

Jenny Stiven:
This is tough. One thing we do have to watch out for, and if fans are looking for some way to be supportive, one of the things that AMPTP is famous for is retaliatory canceling of shows. This has happened in every strike. What ends up happening is reality programs and other non-scripted shows make them enough revenue that they don’t wanna go back to the scripted shows that they paused. For your favorite franchises, for your favorite shows, for new shows, I mean, things like Abbott Elementary. Quinta Brunson is very concerned because they just had Season Three green-lit. We all read the news, before the strikes happened, we were already seeing shows canceled that had already been shot. They are going to resell that content globally, but not domestically. One of the biggest ways that you can support actors and writers is support their shows that are on pause that had already started shooting. It’s super easy to find those; Deadline has a whole list. You can literally just search for “productions paused in strikes,” and they’ll give you the whole list. What you wanna do is find your favorite shows that had already started pre-production or production and support those writers and actors. You need the producers to see that there’s an audience still out there because what they do is they use the excuse, especially because it’s summertime, that nobody cares if that show comes back. They cancel it.

David Read:
They’re no longer in limbo, they’re just cut. That’s wild.

Darren Sumner:
I’m still looking for Season Four of Snowpiercer. It’s been a long time.

Jenny Stiven:
Good luck.

David Read:
I didn’t know you were watching it.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s one that’s gonna get killed, I hate to tell you.

David Read:
That’s crazy.

Jenny Stiven:
Because the price tag was high.

David Read:
That’s crazy.

Darren Sumner:
My concern is that this is gonna go on for a very long time, an uncomfortably long time, because there are so many new players relative to five or 10 years ago, relative to 2008. There are so many new players with new interests that the industry is still trying to figure out how to accommodate everybody’s interests. Like a lot of the streamers wanting to keep all their data close to the vest.

Jenny Stiven:
They have no reference point. Apple does, to some degree, Hulu does for sure, because they were there in 2008, they started to see that shift. But Netflix, Amazon, and certainly to some degree, even Disney Plus or Paramount Plus, et cetera, those are individual silos. Those are people who are millennials or younger millennials who have no memory and don’t have any reference point for 2008. They don’t care. In their minds, “We’ve got enough content, we’re just gonna keep going. We don’t need you.” Therein lies the question earlier about AI. “We’re gonna go use AI,” which is the sticking point in some of the contracts. This could be a horrible catch-22, but just because it could be a horrible catch-22 doesn’t mean you don’t stand up for what’s right. Just because something’s scary and it might go horribly doesn’t mean that you lose courage in standing up to that line and saying, “No, this is morally not okay. This is morally and ethically not right.” This isn’t just about, “Oh, gee, we want more money.” Ethical rules have been bent to the point that they are breaking, or don’t exist at all. This is the beauty, actually. This is the beauty from 2008. In 2008, social media was just starting. I was working in social media. We have power that we didn’t have then and we had power then that we sure as shit didn’t have when I was on IATSE trying to strike in 1999, 2000. There is huge benefit, huge power in the voices that we have in support of our favorite actors, our favorite writers, our favorite shows, our favorite series. Remember, showrunners are caught in a horrible position. Showrunners are writers, they are producers, they are directors. The DGA just signed a contract and the DGA had voted to strike, but the contract that the producers were willing to negotiate with directors took that because they knew the directors don’t have at stake the AI issues and residual issues that the writers and the actors have. There’s also less of them, so the producers go, “We can do this. We can make your percentages.” Directors already get an automatic percentage on the back end. It is such a better position and leverage that we have as fans to make those passionate pleas known to producers. There is a monolith feeling to the AMPTP. It’s bad enough just looking at Amazon, now add Netflix and Apple and Hulu and Paramount and Sony and Universal and not Fox anymore, Disney. You look at those and you think, “How can I make a difference?” They pay a lot of attention. I wish they paid more, but they pay a lot of attention to our voices. So, where we didn’t have the power in 2008, and yet it made a difference, we can make an even bigger difference and have power now in saying, “This is important. We are going to boycott.” I’m not saying we do that yet, but that’s the power we could have.

David Read:
Marcia Middleton, “What will happen with Dial the Gate in the meantime?” That’s a great question, Marcia, and hello. Kiss to you.

Jenny Stiven:
Hi, Marcia.

David Read:
A lot of the Canadian actors that we usually have on the show, or could potentially have, are not necessarily SAG. I suspect they’re gonna wanna stand in solidarity with them and not do content in terms of interviews. Season Three of Dial the Gate started last September with Gatecon. I’ve gone way into my summer break because I’ve got other projects happening that may forestall Season Four until January of next year. I’m also looking at these strikes and talking with visual effects people, for instance, or others who are saying, “Now’s the time. I’ve got all the time in the world now.” James Robbins, who I could never get a hold of to sit down – I could call him and talk with him, but we could never interview. I think we may be sitting down and going through a few years of his art. We’re gonna do the first one next week and release it on Saturday. There is making hay opportunity here for us as fans as well.

Jenny Stiven:
I forget what it’s called. I think it’s called ACTRA – The Canadian Actors Guild and the Canadian Writers Guild. So, here’s a fun little fact I didn’t know until just recently. WGA and SAG-AFTRA did not support the Canadian strikes two years ago and last year. There’s some resentment going on that, “Hey, you didn’t support us.” A lot of Canadian actors hold dual union membership. We’ll see. At Dragon Con, we were gonna have Torri and Jewel and Paul and Gary and, who am I missing? I’m missing somebody. David Nykl. We might not because some of them have dual union membership, some of them are only SAG-AFTRA. I think Rachel’s only SAG-AFTRA. I think what’s probably gonna happen, I hope, is that for the most part, that they’re in solidarity. You might find that some of them would be okay with it, because they’re not promoting a new project.

David Read:
They have kids to feed.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s a weird gray area of if you’re talking about Stargate, which is currently a production in development with two struck companies, I mean, I don’t know. If I were an actor, I don’t think I would do it. I don’t think I’d risk it.

David Read:
It’s craziness. Jenny, thank you for this. Darren, thank you for coming on.

Darren Sumner:
My pleasure.

David Read:
Thank you for spurring us to talk on air. Thank you.

Darren Sumner:
I wanna know before we wrap, what are you guys watching right now?

Jenny Stiven:
I was watching Citadel. We are watching, finally, the final season of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

David Read:
Parents love it

Jenny Stiven:
I know. I am watching Foundation, ’cause I hadn’t seen it. We are finishing Ted Lasso and Shrinking, ’cause during Tim’s school we can’t watch everything that we wanna watch. I’m watching Ghosts, that’s my palate cleanser for fun. I’m loving Strange New Worlds, I’m watching that with Timmy. We do watch together. He’s in Chicago and he’s coming home for Comic-Con.

David Read:
Oh, absolutely. I am currently watching Manifest. I am in Season Two. I waited for that show to finish. It’s very Lost feel. It is campier than I was expecting.

Jenny Stiven:
It is.

David Read:
It’s good though and I’m glad that it has a resolution. When my folks come and visit, we’re in the middle of Ted Lasso Season Three. I just re-watched the Xindi arc on Enterprise.

Darren Sumner:
So cool.

David Read:
It’s my favorite single season on Star Trek. Strange New Worlds, I’m getting ready to watch Season Two of that as well.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my God, we’re having so much fun with that show.

David Read:
Darren, what about you?

Darren Sumner:
I just spent a week with my brother. One of the first things that we do is catch up on what we’ve been watching and he’s like, “Have you seen this? Have you seen this one?” My response is always, “Nope, not enough spaceships.”

David Read:
So, he’s not sci-fi?

Darren Sumner:
No, he watches a lot of sci-fi, but he also watches other stuff. I apparently have a really narrow palate for my television.

Jenny Stiven:
We know you’re watching Stargate, so what else are you watching?

Darren Sumner:
Watching Stargate with the kids. We’re re-watching Foundation Season One.

David Read:
Re-watching. So, it was that good?

Darren Sumner:
With a lot of these streamers, there’s not a consistent release pattern. When there’s only been a year and there’s only 8 or 10 episodes, my wife and I look at each other and we’re like, “I remember a little bit about the last season of The Witcher or Shadow and Bone.”

Jenny Stiven:
Shit, I’m watching The Witcher too.

Darren Sumner:
We can get through all of that. So, instead of re-watching just the finale to remind ourselves of where it left off, we’ll re-watch the entire 10-episode season. That’s what we’re doing with Foundation right now. I just discovered Silo, which I’m recommending to you.

David Read:
Really? I was wondering about that.

Darren Sumner:
It’s a great show. It was totally off my radar until the finale aired and got a bunch of buzz. I didn’t realize that it was the adaptation of this book series. The first book in the series is called Wool. It had been on my radar that Apple TV+ was adapting Wool, but when the show came out, they called it Silo. It fell off my radar that that was the same show.

David Read:
That was it?

Darren Sumner:
That was the project.

David Read:
Interesting.

Darren Sumner:
That was the Wool TV show.

Jenny Stiven:
All right. Have to check it out.

David Read:
It sounds like, “ooh, is the world outside or the silo or not? Tune in to find out,” and go on Wikipedia a year later and read it. If you’re saying it’s good, then I’ll check it out.

Darren Sumner:
Elements of The 100, elements of Snowpiercer.

David Read:
Interesting.

Darren Sumner:
Sort of self-contained society, last human survivors. Question mark. It’s really cool. Obviously, I’m not gonna spoil anything about a twist, but there’s layers. There are immersive twists within twists.

Jenny Stiven:
We gotta watch that. When Tim’s on school vacation during the summer, we cram a lot in.

David Read:
Of course. Can I get a guilty secret off my conscience? When I have five minutes to sit down, what do I watch?

Jenny Stiven:
What?

David Read:
Below Deck.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh, please. Don’t we all have those?

Darren Sumner:
I hate reality television. I watch none of it

David Read:
They don’t have time to script a lot.

Darren Sumner:
I watch the news and I watch YouTube.

David Read:
I was home with my folks for like a month in between houses and my mother had Below Deck Mediterranean on. I was like, “I love Captain Sandy.”

Jenny Stiven:
It’s so much fun to watch it.

David Read:
It’s fun.

Jenny Stiven:
I watch reality television as a palate cleanser for fun or if I’m not feeling good. It’s a great one, ’cause I get migraines, so it’s a great one when you don’t want something that isn’t gonna be a brain teaser.

David Read:
You don’t have to think about it.

Jenny Stiven:
My husband watches a crazy amount of documentaries and history and all that. We’ve been super addicted to, I forget what they’re called. They’re like massive downhill motocross races. They’re all GoPros, so they’re all from their point of view. It’s become super, super big in the past five years. Kilian Bron is one of the top five in the world. We are so addicted to his channel. It’s literally a weird ASMR thing, where you’re watching this and you zone out, and at the same time, because it’s his point of view, you yelp as they go over some cliff or it’s a 20,000-foot drop. We’re completely addicted to that right now.

David Read:
The most terrifying ASMR.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s the silly stuff that you watch, ’cause my son and my husband are completely addicted to FailArmy and I can’t handle it. I can’t. I can’t handle watching FailArmy stuff. I find it cruel and horrible and hilarious.

David Read:
Remember when you fell up on stage? I’ve hit my head on all kinds of things. I wish someone had filmed that, because someone would get a good laugh out of it.

Jenny Stiven:
I asked Allan for that footage.

David Read:
If he had it.

Jenny Stiven:
Here’s what’s funny, I found it funny. I wanna watch it because I bet I looked horrifying, flat-out flying, and he wouldn’t give me the footage. I wanted it because I wanted to make a repeated GIF of it. I can laugh at myself but I don’t wanna watch everybody else go through it.

David Read:
Since he built the stage, I’m not surprised that he feels that way.

Jenny Stiven:
I know. It wasn’t his fault.

David Read:
This is true.

Jenny Stiven:
I was looking over there.

David Read:
That’s right.

Jenny Stiven:
I wasn’t looking right there. So, there you go.

David Read:
Jenny Stiven, digital marketing with Clio Consulting, Darren Sumner, owner of gateworld.net, my dear friends, thank you for joining me on this episode. We consistently had 150 concurrent viewers for two hours.

Jenny Stiven:
Wow. That’s great.

David Read:
Jenny, I think that the word is out that you’re the person to go to with a lot of this stuff.

Jenny Stiven:
No, there’s so many good people out there. We wanted to get Clare, but she’s shooting.

David Read:
Yes. So, Clare, what’s her last name?

Jenny Stiven:
Bateman-King.

David Read:
Clare Bateman-King. As this begins to wind down, whenever it does, I’d like to have a part two follow-up to see how things shook out, to welcome you both back for that, whenever that happens, so that we can have a resolution to this and see where things fell.

Jenny Stiven:
That’d be great.

David Read:
Thank you, guys, so much.

Jenny Stiven:
Thank you for having me.

David Read:
Thank you.

Jenny Stiven:
Thanks.

Darren Sumner:
Thanks, everybody, for watching.

David Read:
Absolutely. Thank you to everyone who submitted questions along the way that we basically answered. I apologize for Raj Luthra, Tiptronic SS and two others who submitted questions as well. Let me see here really quick. I’m never prepared for the end when I have guests on. God forbid. We’ve got Season Six and Seven artwork with James CD Robbins. We’re gonna be filming this week. That is currently set for July 22nd at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, where we’re gonna go through his art for Season Six and Seven of SG-1. If you enjoyed the discussion, please hit that Like button so that we can get the word out about the show that little bit more. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you guys tuning in and we will see you on the other side.