Hollywood industry in crisis after strikes, streaming wars

Michael Fortin was at the heart of Hollywood’s golden age of streaming.

The actor and aerial cinematographer turned his hobby of flying drones into a profitable business in 2012 just as the streaming wars were taking off. For a decade, he was flying high above film sets, creating sleek aerial shots for movies and TV shows on Netflix, Amazon and Disney.

Now he’s on the verge of becoming homeless – again. He was evicted from the Huntington Beach home he shared with his wife and two young children and now is being booted from the Las Vegas apartment they moved to because they could no longer afford to live in Southern California.

“We were saving to buy a house, we had money, we had done things the right way,” he says. “Two years ago, I didn’t worry about going out to dinner with my wife and kids and spending 200 bucks.”

“Now I worry about going out and spending $5 on a value meal at McDonald’s.”

For over a decade, business was booming in Hollywood, with studios battling to catch up to new companies like Netflix and Hulu. But the good times ground to a halt in May 2023, when Hollywood’s writers went on strike.

The strikes lasted multiple months and marked the first time since the 1960s that both writers and actors joined forces – effectively shutting down Hollywood production. But rather than roaring back, in the one year since the strikes ended, production has fizzled.

Projects have been cancelled and production was cut across the city as jobs have dried up, with layoffs at many studios – most recently at Paramount. It had a second round of layoffs this week, as the storied movie company moves to cut 15% of its workforce ahead of a merger with the production company Skydance.

Unemployment in film and TV in the United States was at 12.5% in August, but many think those numbers are actually much higher, because many film workers either do not file for unemployment benefits because they’re not eligible or they’ve exhausted those benefits after months of not working.

As a whole, the number of US productions during the second quarter of 2024 was down about 40% compared to the same period in 2022. Globally, there was a 20% decline over that period, according to ProdPro, which tracks TV and film productions.

That means less new movies and binge-worthy shows for us.

But experts say the streaming boom wasn’t sustainable. And studios are trying to figure out how to be profitable in a new world when people don’t pay for cable TV funded by commercials.

“The air has come out of the content bubble,” says Matthew Belloni, the founder of Puck News, which covers the entertainment industry. “Crisis is a good word. I try not to be alarmist, but crisis is what people are feeling.”

Part of the boom was fuelled by Wall Street, where tech giants like Netflix saw record growth and studios, like Paramount, saw their share prices soar for adding their own streaming service offers.

“It caused an overheating of the content market. There were 600 scripted live action series airing just a few years ago and then the stock market stopped rewarding that,” Mr Belloni says. “Netflix crashed – all the other companies crashed. Netflix has since recovered – but the others are really struggling to get to profitability.”

And along with the streaming bubble bursting, some productions are also being lured away from California by attractive tax incentives in other states and countries. Los Angeles leaders are so concerned about the slowdown that Mayor Karen Bass created a task force last month to consider new incentives for film production in Hollywood.

“The entertainment industry is critical to the economic vitality of the Los Angeles region,” Bass said announcing the plan, explaining it is a “cornerstone” of the city’s economy and supplies hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Recent data shows the entertainment industry contributes over $115bn (£86bn) annually to the region’s economy, with an employment base of over 681,000 people, the mayor said.

The writers’ and actors’ strikes lasted for months and resulted in union contracts that offer more money and protections against artificial intelligence.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the chief negotiator with the Screen Actors Guild union, told the BBC that some consolidation in Hollywood was inevitable. He says he is optimistic that production will be ramping up soon.

“What makes these companies special, what gives them their unique ability to create value is their relationship with creative talent,” he said while visiting a picket line outside a Disney office in September, where video game voice actors are currently on strike fighting for similar protections.

Hollywood “always thinks it’s in crisis,” he says. “It is a town that constantly faces technological innovation – all kinds of change – which is part of the magic. Part of keeping content fresh is everyone having the idea that things don’t always have to be the way they’ve been.”

Mr Fortin’s drone company was operating nearly every day before the strikes. Now he’s flown the drones just 22 days in the year since the strikes ended. And as an actor – he often plays tough guys – he has worked just 10 days. He used to work as a background actor to get by, but the pay barely covers the gas money to get to Los Angeles from Las Vegas.

“It was a great wave, and it crashed,” Mr Fortin said after a day flying his drones on the AppleTV+ show Platonic – his first gig with drones since April.

“Things are coming in little by little,” he says in his van before driving back to Las Vegas for a court hearing to fight his eviction order.

“Hollywood gave me everything,” he says. “But it feels like the industry has turned its back on lots of people, not just me.”